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THE ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

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JTHE ANCIENT
GREEK HISTORIANS n

(HARVARD LECTURES)

j^ BY

f. Br^URY,^ LiTT.D., LL.D.

• tXGius PRorxssoR or modern history in the unitxrsitt or c^mbrumk

507803

ae>. & so

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1909

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111

BE

Ck>PTBIGHT, 1909,

By the MAOMILLAN OOMPANT.

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1909.

Noitfooti 9nM :
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

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PREFACE

This volume consists of the Lane Lectures which
I had the honour of delivering at Harvard Uni-
versity in spring 1908, under the auspices of the
Classical Department. They are printed very
nearly as they were originally written, though
some of my kind hearers, if they should glance
through, may detect a good many passages which
were omitted in the Lecture Hall. The book
amounts to a historical survey of Greek historio-
graphy, down to the first century B.C., and such
as it is, I dedicate it to Mr. Gardiner M. Lane,
who founded the lecturership some years ago in the
interests of humanistic study.

The lecture on Herodotus would have gained
much if Mr. Macau's admirable work on the last
three Books had appeared in time for me to use it.
It was satisfactory to find that he had established
the priority of those Books with a convincing array
of arguments. I have inconsistently included his
edition of vii.-ix. in the Bibliography; for the
purpose of the list is to make a general acknow-
ledgment of obligations which in lectures of this
kind could not conveniently be acknowledged in

vii

viii ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

detail. There are not very many questions con-
nected with the Greek historians which I have not
at one time or another talked over with my friend
Mr. Mahaffy, and I feel sure that I owe him much
which neither of us could now verify.

September 5, 1908.

I

CONTENTS

LKrr.

I. The Rise of Greek History in Ionia .
§ 1. The Historical Aspect of the Epics
§ 2. The Foundation of History by Hecataeus
The Successors of Hecataeus : § 3. Early Mytho

graphers .
§ 4. Early Historians
§ 5. Summary .

''n. Herodotus

y in. Thucydides

§ 1. His Life and the Growth of his Work.

§ 2. His Principles of Historiography : accuracy

and relevance ....
§ 3. Modern Criticisms on his Competence

§ 4. His Treatment of non-contemporary History 102

■^ IV. Thucydides (continued)
§ 1. The Speeches

107

107

§ 2. Dramatic Treatment of the historiae personae ll6

123
131

§ 3. Rationalistic View of History

§ 4. Political Analysis ....

The Development of Greek Historiography after

Thucydides . . . . . .150

§ 1. The Generation after Thucydides (Xeno-

phon, Cratippus, Philistus) . . .150

§ 2. The Influence of Rhetoric . . . . l60

§ 3. The Influence of Philosophy and the Rise of

Antiquarianism . . . . .179
ix

1

2
8

18
21
33

36

75

75

81
91

X ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIAN

LXCT.

I

VI. PoLYBius (and Poseidonius) .... 1 con-
VII. The Influence of Greek on Roman HistoruW pot
ORAPHY ........ 224

VIII. Views of the Ancients concerning the Use of

History .,....,, 242

Appendix. The Re-handling of his History by Thucydides 26 1
Bibliography ......... 267

Index 273

I

THE ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

€

LECTURE I

THE RISE OF GREEK HISTORY IN IONIA

In these lectures I propose to trace the genesis
and the development of the historical literature
of the Greeks. I will attempt to bring into a
connected view the principles, the governing ideas,
and the methods of the Greek historians, and to
relate them to the general movements of Greek
thought and Greek history. I need hardly
apologize for devoting much of our time to
Herodotus and Thucydides, who, however familiar
to us from childhood, have the secret of engaging
an interest that is never exhausted and never
grows stale. As a Hellenist, I shall be happy if
I succeed in illustrating the fact that, as in poetry
and letters generally, as in art, as in philosophy,
and in mathematics, so too in history, our debt to
the Greeks transcends calculation. They were
not the first to chronicle human events, but the
were the first to apply criticism. And that means,
they originated history.

IS I B

2 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lectt.

§ 1. The historical aspect of the Epics

Long before history, in the proper sense of
the word, came to be written, the early Greeks
possessed a literature which was equivalent to
history for them and was accepted with unreserved
credence — their epic poems. The Homeric lays
not only entertained the imagination, but also
satisfied what we may call the historical interest,
of the audiences who heard them recited. This
interest in history was practical, not antiquarian ;
the story of the past made a direct appeal to their
pride, while it was associated with their religious
piety towards their ancestors. Every self-re-
specting city sought to connect itself, through its
ancient clans, with the Homeric heroes, and this
constituted the highest title to prestige in the
Greek world. The poems which could confer
such a title were looked up to as authoritative
historical documents. In disputes about territory
the lUad was appealed to as a valid witness. The
enormous authority of Homer, the deep liold
which the Trojan epics had won on the minds
and hearts of the Greeks, may partly explain the
puzzle, why it was so long before it occurred to
them to record recent or contemporary events.
For when we consider the early growth of their
political intelligence, the paucity of their historical
records must strike us with surprise. In the
seventh century they were far advanced in political

I THE EPICS AS HISTORY 3

experience. Sparta, for instance, had a compli-
cated constitution ; yearly magistrates had been
introduced at Athens. The number of the small
independent states which had to live together,
some of which had special relations to one another,
tended to develop the poHtical sense. Intensity
of political life had been the outcome of the
institution of the polis, and the Hellenic world
was the scene of numerous and various experi-
ments in government In these conditions,
political literature originated. Archilochus, Tyr-
taeus, Solon, and Theognis were the most eminent
of the ancient publicists who dealt with current
politics in metrical pamphlets. But the Greeks
of this period felt no impulse to record their
experiences in historical records ; the only history
they cared for was still furnished by the epics.
Long before this, Egypt and Assyria had
abundant contemporary records, narratives of
conquests and achievements, inscribed for the
glorification of some powerful monarch. But the
early Greeks, even despots, were free from the
kind of self- consciousness which prompted an
Assur-bani-pal to draw up a narrative of his
deeds; Periander and Peisistratus did not think
of securing posthumous fame by such appeals to
posterity. Had Peisistratus been an oriental ruler,
he would have invited his literary friends to
celebrate his own career; being a Greek of his
time, he appointed a committee of men of letters
to edit the Homeric poems. There were indeed

4 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

some records kept in the seventh century, and
perhaps sooner, which at a later time were to
prove useful ; but they were bare enumerations
of names, such as lists of magistrates or priests.

Now it is important to realise that the historical
interest of the Greeks of those days, concentrated
as it was on the epic traditions, was active and
productive. The epics were still growing in the
seventh century, though the period of growth was
soon to be over. It is almost certain that the
Iliad and Odyssey did not reach the fulness of
their present compass much before 600 b.c. I
need only ask you to recall the lectures which
Mr. Gilbert Murray delivered at this University
last year; some things he said happen to
prepare the way for the consideration of the
origins of historiography. He insisted, rightly as
I think, on the fact that the groundwork and
principal motives of the Homeric epics were
historical ; and he showed, with admirable insight,
how the development of the poems, in its succes-
sive stages, responded to, and reflected, the ideas,
manners, and tastes of successive periods. But
besides this moral and social criticism which Mr.
Murray traced, there was another kind of criticism
which betrayed the spirit of historical inquiry.
The epics relating to the Trojan war, which
existed, let us say, about 800 B.C. in order to fix
our ideas, would raise in an inquiring mind many
questions as to the course of the war, its final
conclusion, the fortunes of many heroes who took

I THE EPICS AS HISTORY 5

part in it, — questions to which Homer gave no
answer. To quench the thirst for such informa-
tion was the office of later poets, who related
events which the older bards did not know or
assumed as known. They had to fill up interstices
and to explain inconsistencies, and this process
necessarily entailed a definite consideration of
chronological sequence, an element which the
original creators of myth do not take into serious
account. It is impossible to say how far these
later poets of the Homeric school drew upon
local legends, how far upon their own invention,
but in their hands the traditions of the Trojan
expedition and its heroes were wrought into a
corpus of Trojan epics, chronologically connected,
in which the Iliad and the Odyssey had their
places.

The new instinct for systematizing tradition
gave rise at the same time to the school of
genealogical poets, of which Hesiod was the most
distinguished and perhaps the first. Their aim
was to work into a consistent system the relation-
ships of the gods and heroes, deriving them from
the primeval beings who generated the world,
and tracing thereby to the origin of things the
pedigrees of the royal families which ruled in
the states of Hellas.^ The interest in genealogies

' Hesiod's Theogony contains a first crude idea of a history of civilisa-
tion in the legend of the Five Ages of man, which evidently brings up to
date an older version in which the ages were Four. The fanciful notion
of marking the degeneration of the race by four ages named after four
metals is improved upon by interpolating the age of Homeric heroes
before the last or iron age.

6 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

linking actual families with legendary heroes ^ was
closely allied to the interest in " origins " connect-
ing the foundations of cities with the heroic age.
This interest gave rise to a group of what we
may call local epics, approximating in style and
character to the Hesiodic school, recording the
mythical origins (/cTto-et9) and the pedigrees of
the founders. We know, for instance, of the
Corintkiaca, ascribed to Eumelus, which may
have been the source of certain later sections of
the Iliad ; ^ of the Naupactian poem ; of the
Phoronis which took its name from Phoroneus,
reputed the first King of Argos.

In all this intellectual activity, we can recognise
in a crude form the instinct of historical inquiry,
guided by the ideas of consistency and chrono-
logical order. The genealogies inevitably brought
chronology into the foreground. We can also
see that the poets possessed a certain kind of
historical sense. They were conscious up to a
certain point of the differences between their own
civilisation and that of the heroic age, and this
consciousness expressed itself in the archaism
which we can observe in the Iliad and Odyssey.
The poets always retained, for instance, the
obsolete bronze armour of antiquity.

One epic poem, belonging to the seventh or
perhaps the sixth century, claims a special mention

^ In this connexion Mahaffy notes an " anxiety to show hereditary
rights in all the usurpers of power throughout early Greek history"
{Prose Writers, i. 10),

" Cp. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 162.

I THE EPICS AS HISTORY 7

here, the Arimaspea ascribed to Aristeas of Pro-
connesus. The subject of this work was Scythia,
which the author seems to have visited, and its
importance for our present purpose is that it
anticipated the interest in geography and ethno-
graphy which, as we shall see, accompanied the rise
of history proper. It seems too to have contained
a reference to an event of what for Aristeas was
modern history, the movement of the Cimmerians
in the seventh century, a movement which he very
properly explained by the pressure of neighbouring
peoples.^ The Arimaspea however is not altogether
isolated. A geographical interest is distinctly
present in the Odyssey ; M. Berard has illustrated
its significance and the historical background.
But perhaps it is rather in the ancient Argonautic
poems, ranging into the same regions which
Aristeas visited, that we may seek the inspiration
of the Arimaspea.

Up to the middle or end of the sixth century,
then, their epic poetry satisfied the historical
interest of the Greeks. For us it is mythical, for
them it was historical And further, during the
later centuries of the epic period, it was becoming
quasi-historical in form. The body of traditions
was being submitted to crude and rudimentary
processes of what we may call historical inquiry.

^ The main authority for Aristeas is Herodotus iv, 13-16 (cp. Macau's
notes). The date here (15) assigned, " 240 years ago," is obviously that
of the foundation of Cyzicus (c. 680 b.c.) and may be used to fix the com-
position of Book IV. to c. 440 b.c. For the guess that Aristeas lived in the
sixth century, it may be said that Dionysius, Be Thuc. 23, brackets him
with Cadmus ; but this is hardly enough to establish even a presumption.

8 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect

The later poets of the Homeric school, and the
poets of the Hesiodic school, worked in obedience
to the need of systematic arrangement and chrono-
logical order. There was no absolute chronology,
no dates ; but time-sequence determined the com-
pletion of the Trojan cycle, and the relation of the
Trojan to other cycles (such as the Theban), and,
in the very nature of the subject, it controlled the
genealogical poems. Scattered and contradictory
traditions were harmonized more or less into a
superficially consistent picture of the past by the
activity of these poets. Their work must have
counted for a great deal in both satisfying and
stimulating the self-consciousness of the Greeks.

§ 2. Tfie foundation of history by Hecataeus

It might be expected that such an examination
of the ancient literature and traditions, though
carried out with no under-thought of questioning
their truth as a whole, would have sown the germs
of criticism and prepared the way for incredulity.
This is a difficult question, as our knowledge of
this literature is so fragmentary. We can point
at least to the notorious scepticism of Stesichorus
about the story of Helen. But we can do more.
The truth seems to be that towards the end of the
epic period there arose in Ionia a spirit which it
would be going too far to describe as incredulous,
but which was certainly flippant and sceptical and
might at any moment break out into positive

I RISE OF CRITICISM 9

incredulity. This spirit is revealed, as Mr. Murray-
has well shown, in some late parts of the Iliad,
especially in the episode of the Beguiling of Zeus ;
it appears in the Odyssey in the lay of Demodocus,
which tells of the punishment of Ares and
Aphrodite by the injured husband Hephaestus.

Such tendencies to scepticism, evolved by the
Ionian temper, were reinforced by the rise of
Ionian science and philosophy. Science and
philosophy meant criticism, and it would not be
long before criticism which the early thinkers
applied to the material world would be systemati-
cally applied to human tradition also, and the
result would be, in some form or other, the
distinction of history from myth.

At the same time the mythopoeic instinct of
the Greeks was still potent and still felicitous in
its operation. But myth assumed a new shape.
Supernatural beings no longer appeared upon the
stage ; and, with the exception of oracles, omens,
and visions, the supernatural mise en scene was
discarded. Fictions gathered round historical
persons, contemporary or recent, but all these
stories, such as the saving of Cypselus, the wooers
of Agarista, the ring of Polycrates, kept well
within the fence of the possibilities of human
experience. They are not in the crude sense
incredible, a-rrta-ra Tm Ka0' rjfia^ film. This new order
of myths corresponds to a new interest, which we
might call the philosophy of life ; it is reflected in
the gnomic poetry of the period. Sages have

"^

10 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

taken the place of heroes ; the Septemvirate of
AVise jNIen was one of the mythical creations.
The authority of Delphi is established beside the
authority of Homer, and Delphi seems to have
been a centre for fiction of this order.

Now let us suppose that before the end of the
sixth century a thoughtful man began to reflect
upon the past fortunes of the Greeks. He would
be struck by the fact that the character of their
history had completely changed. The age of the
heroes, as described in the epics, was marked by
divine interventions, frequent intercourse between
gods and men, startling metamorphoses, and all
kinds of miracles. How was it that the character
of human experience had changed and that such
marvels had ceased to happen ? It was inevitable
that the question should be asked : can we believe
the epic poets and take all they tell us for literal
fact ? And we find that before 500 b.c. a philo-
sopher of Ionia, Xenophanes, had arraigned the
credibility of Homer and Hesiod.^ He rejected
the anthropomorphisms of popular theology, and
branded the Greek myths as ancient fictions (TrXd-
afiara rcov irporepcov). His rationalism was in the
interest of cosmic law. He was applying, whether
explicitly or not, the principle formulated by later

' It is believed that much about the same time a western Greek,
Theajreiies of Rhegium, was attempting to interpret Homer allegorically.
According to Tatian, adv. Graecos 31, he flourished in the time of
Cambyses ; schol. Ven. to //. T 67 (533 ed. Bekker) he was the first to
write on Homer, and he introduced allegorical interpretation ; the schol.
on Dionysius Thrax (Bekker, Anecd. Gr. 729) suggests that he dealt with
grammar.

I HECATAEUS 11

rationalists that what was possible once is possible
still, and what is incredible now is incredible
always. And he was also concerned, in the cause
of ethics, to denounce the attribution to the gods
of conduct condemned by the contemporary moral
standards of Greece.^

Besides the efforts of Ionian men of science to
explain nature by reason, — besides the dawn of
philosophy, — there was another fact which con-
tributed, in the second part of the sixth century, to
widen the horizon of intelligent minds in Ionia, j
The power of Persia had been extended to the >
Aegean, and the Asiatic Greeks had been incor- 1
porated in the Persian empire. A natural conse-
quence was the stimulation of interest and curiosity
among those Greeks about the other lands of the
great realm to which they were now attached ; and
their new position provided facilities for gratifying
this curiosity. Oriental geography and history
presented to the Greeks a new field of study, and
this exercised, as we shall see, an important influ-
ence in bringing history to the birth.

Its birth is associated with the name of Hecataeus
of Miletus. He was, first and foremost, a geo-
grapher. I do not dispute the title of Anaxi-
mander to be called the " father of geography,"
but Hecataeus may be considered one of the

^ It is remarkable that Xenophanes wrote two epic poems on quasi-
historical subjects — the Origin of his native home Colophon, and the
colonisation of his adoptive home Elea ; but no traces of these works
have survived. It would be interesting to know how he handled definite
traditions.

12 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

founders of geographical science ; his chief con-
tributions to knowledge were in that field. Born
perhaps near the middle of the sixth century, he
not only travelled in Greek lands and on the
shores of the Black Sea, but explored the interior
parts of the Persian empire, and Egypt, which had
been annexed by Cambyses. Perhaps his travels
extended to southern Spain. Everywhere he
collected facts for a geographical work which was
published under the title of a Map of the World.
But this work ranged beyond the sphere of pure
geography. There is no doubt that it contained,
besides descriptions of countries and places, a great
deal of ethnography and history, and especially it
introduced the Greeks to oriental history and
sketched for the first time the successive monarchies
of Assyria, Media, and Persia. The writer almost
certainly touched upon the Ionian history of his
own day, in which he himself played a part.
Herodotus, you may remember, mentions advice
tendered by Hecataeus to the lonians on more
than one occasion, advice which they did not
follow. The most likely person to record advice
which has not been followed is the adviser ; and
we may pretty confidently assume that the source
of Herodotus was Hecataeus himself.

Hecataeus thus initiated the composition of
" modern " history, though only in a work which was
geographical in its title and main argument. He
also wrote a work on the ancient history of Greece.
It was a prose compilation from the genealogical

I HECATAEUS 13

epics. But, though its title, Genealogies, shows
how potent the influence of the epics was, it was
a critical investigation. The opening words are
striking and might have stirred a reader to ex-
pectancy of a thoroughgoing and drastic revision
of what currently passed for the ancient history of
Hellas. "What I write here," says Hecataeus,
"is the account which I considered to be true.
For the stories of the Greeks are numerous, and in
my opinion ridiculous." The actual fragments of
the work would not enable us to judge to what
lengths his scepticism ventured. The few instances
of rationalistic interpretation which we can note are
of a sufficiently innocent kind, but show us that,
while he did not adopt the doctrine of Xenophanes
that the myths are fictions, he applied a canon of
inner probability. For instance, he explained the
hound of Hades which Heracles was related to
have dragged up from the under- world, as the
name of a terrible serpent which haunted Taenarum.
Again, he transported the home of Geryones and
his cattle from distant Spain to the more accessible
pastures of Epirus.^

But a clearer view of the attitude of Hecataeus
may be derived from certain passages in Herodotus
to which I shall have to draw attention in the next
lecture. We shall then see that his scepticism in
regard to the ancient history of the Greeks had

^ It seems probable it was from his geographical work that Herodotus
derived the explanation of the legend of the nursing of Cyrus by a female
dog, as meaning that he was suckled by a woman named Spako, which
signified dog in the Medic language (Pra^ek).

k

14 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

been stimulated by the acquaintance he made
in Egypt with the historical traditions of the
Egyptians. There he made the discovery that
in days when gods were supposed to be walking
abroad on the hills and in the vales of Hellas,
Egypt at the distance of a few days' voyage was
managed exclusively by mere human beings. It
was an obvious inference that the age of the gods
in Greece must be relegated to as remote a date as
the age of the gods in Egypt, and that the heroic
age of the not very distant ancestors of the existing
Greeks must be divested of the supernatural
atmosphere with which poetical fable had encom-
passed it. We may conclude that the prefatory
announcement of Hecataeus was not excessive,
and that his rationalism was more complete than
the few meagre fragments of the work might lead
us to suppose.

Hecataeus, as I have said, wrote in prose. His
choice of prose was a proof of his competence and
a condition of his achievement. But prose had, in
all probability, been used already at Miletus for the
treatment of a historical subject. The very exist-
ence of Cadmus the Milesian has been called in
question by some modern critics, and he is certainly
a misty figure. The evidence seems to me — though
I speak with diffidence — ^to point to the conclusion
that he existed, and was one of the earliest prose
writers of lonia.^ My idea of Cadmus is that he

^ Chief sources for Cadmus : Dionys. Hal. De Thuc. 23 ; Strabo i. 2.
6; Pliny, N.H. v. 31, vii. 56; Josephus, c. Ap. i. 2; Suidas, sub

I HECATAEUS 15

lived in the early part of the sixth century, con-
temporary with Anaximander and Pherecydes of
Syros, and wrote a book on the Origins of Miletus
and other Ionian cities, a work which was notable
only because it was written in prose, and not
differing in treatment or character from epics like
the Corinthiaca and Phorords. This is perhaps the
best we can do for the reputation of Cadmus ; he
was a very early prose writer or logograpJier^ but
there is no reason to suppose that he was more of
a historian than Eumelus or Eugammon. The
claim of Hecataeus to be the founder of history
cannot be disputed in his favour.

A logographer, as you know, means a writer of
prose, not specially a historian.

The early historical literature of the Greeks had
no distinctive name. It formed part of the general
prose literature which was then springing up in Ionia
and which included philosophical and scientific
works, and, for instance, the fables of Aesop. In
their nomenclature, the Greeks regarded only the

nomine. The passages of Strabo and Pliny show that the creation of
prose was variously ascribed to Cadmus and Pherecydes (of Syros). This
was, of course, the result of Alexandrine investigation. From Dionysius
we learn that an extant work which bore the name of Cadmus was
strongly suspected of being a fabrication. We may take it for granted
that it was spurious, but it seems highly probable that its subject was
that of the genuine work which had long since perished. Hence, I
think, we may pretty securely accept the information of Suidas (whether
derived from the pseudo-Cadmus or from Alexandrine sources) that
Cadmus composed ktIctiv MiXt^tov Kal ttjj SXrys 'Iwvlas. From Dionysius
we also infer that Cadmus belonged to a distinctly older generation than
Hecataeus. The posthumous rivalry between him and Pherecydes for
the origination of literary prose points to the first half of the sixth
century ; for Anaximander's prose treatise on Nature cannot have been
much later than 550 b.c. Cp. Gomperz, Oriechische Denker, i. p. 41.

16 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

difference of form. The epopoioi had now to be
distinguished from the logopoioi, the epic poets
who composed verse from the logo -poets who
composed prose. The logopoioi were also called
logographoi, which means exactly the same thing,
only emphasizing the fact that they used the pen.
Heracleitus and Sophron were as much logographers
as Hecataeus.

History had at first ' no distinctive name. The
term laropir) did not then mean what it came to
mean later. Yet, as it was used by the lonians,
we may say that it suggested the new element
which discriminated the logoi of Hecataeus from
the epics (and, as I suggest, from Cadmus). You
remember how in Homer a legal dispute is brought
before a la-rmp, a man of skill who inquires into the
alleged facts and decides what the true facts are.
iaroplri meant an inquisition of this kind. We saw
that the later epic poets did a certain amount of
inquiring and comparing, and, in so far as they did
this, they were leading up to history. But in the
preface to the Genealogies of Hecataeus the con-
ception of a historical inquiry stands revealed.
He endeavoured to deal with his data more or less
like a Xa-rwp, and to elicit the truth, applying
canons of common sense. Of course his methods
were unsound ; but in his aim and effort he was a
pioneer, and prose, as he saw, was the right vehicle
for moving along the new paths which he opened up.

The rise of prose was probably a condition of
the rise of history ; it is almost inconceivable that

I HECATAEUS 17

history could have emerged from its shell if the
new vehicle of critical thought had not been there
to carry it. It was not indeed a foregone con-
clusion that Hecataeus should choose prose. Verse
and prose were still rivals, they had not yet
clearly differentiated their spheres. If Cadmus
had recorded the foundation of Miletus in prose,
Xenophanes related the foundation of Colophon
in metre. Parmenides was writing verse, while
Heracleitus was expressing his deeper thoughts
in prose ; it is not insignificant that Heracleitus
was incomparably the greater thinker. In the
choice of prose the founder of history displayed
his insight.^

Both sides of the activity of Hecataeus, the
genealogical in which he is a mythographer, the
geographical in which he is also a historian, had a
far-reaching influence on the development of Greek
historiography ; and announce on the very thres-
hold its weakness and its strength. In treating
their " ancient " history the Greeks were always
to remain under the influence of the epics : the
sceptre was never to fall from the hands of Homer
and Hesiod ; and the historical investigation of
early Greece was never to be anything but at best
a more or less clarified and arbitrarily rationalised
mythography. On the other hand, it was the
treatment of Persia and the East in the Geography
of Hecataeus that inaugurated "modern" and

^ The fragments do not enable us to appreciate his style. According
to Hermogenes {De gen. die. ii. 12) his prose had a charm, but he was less
careful in composition than Herodotus.

C

18 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

"contemporary" history in wliich the Greeks
achieved such high excellence.

§ 3. Early Mythographers

I may take "ancient" history first. The
Genealogies of Hecataeus soon led to new works
on the same subject. In the next generation
Pherecydes of Leros, who settled at Athens,
and Acusilaus of Argos — they seem to have
flourished before the middle of the fifth century
— again served up the epic legends in prose.
These writers have no claim to the title of
historians ; they were simply mythographers and
it would be well always to describe them as such.

The work of Pherecydes was distinguished by
its comprehensiveness. He modified the traditions
for various reasons, but not on any systematic
principle. For instance, on chronological grounds
he makes Philammon, instead of Orpheus, accom-
pany the Argonauts. In order to connect the
poet Homer with the poet Orpheus, he invents
genealogical intermediaries. The interpolation of
links in pedigrees is a feature of his method ;
and here he is working simply on the lines, and in |
the spirit, of the later epic poets themselves. If
he modifies a legend, it is not to rationalise, but \
rather in the interests of popular superstition.
The old legend made Apollo slay the Cycl6pes
because they furnished Zeus with the thunder-
bolts which destroyed Asclepius. Pherecydes makes

I MYTHOGRAPHERS 19

him slay not the Cyclopes but the sons of the
Cyclopes, evidently to indulge the popular belief
that the Cyclopes are still busy with the manu-
facture of thunder.^ We may say then that
Pherecydes was a systematizer of the epic tradi-
tions on conservative lines, contrasting not only
with the revolutionary method of Hecataeus, but
with the freer treatment of the legends by the
Attic tragedians.

In Acusilaus we can detect the influence of
Hecataeus. He cannot resist the temptation to
rationalise up to a certain point. He will not
admit, for instance, that Zeus could change him-
self into a bull, and so he holds the animal which
carried off^ Europa to have been a mere common
bull sent by Zeus, not the metamorphosed god.
He describes the fleece of Colchis as not golden
but purple, and explains that it was empurpled by
sea-water. More interesting than these halting
concessions to improbable probability is his recon-
struction of the causes of the Trojan war. He
asked himself why the goddess Aphrodite should
have united herself to the Trojan Anchises. Such
an occurrence as the union of a goddess with a
mortal required a motive. He found it in an
oracle that the descendants of Anchises should
reign when the kingdom of Priam had fallen.
When her son Aeneas grew to manhood, the
object of Aphrodite was to bring about the fall

* Wilamowitz-MoUendorfF, Isyllos, 65. For the story of Cephalus and
Procris as told in the epics, Pherecydes substituted what seems to have
been the family tradition of the Cephalidae. Bertscb, Pherek. Studien, p. 2.

20 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

of Priam's dynasty, and for this purpose she caused
Paris to fall in love with Helen. Then when
Helen had been carried off, she helped the Trojans
in order that they might not, in despair at defeat,
surrender Helen and save the throne of Priam.
The story of the judgment of Paris, which, accord-
ing to the Cypria, was the original cause of the
war, is thus rejected, and the war is attributed to
the ambitious schemes and Machiavellian policy
of Aphrodite. This is rationalism of a sort. The
accepted view ascribed the cause of a great move-
ment to the vanity of a goddess ; Acusilaus,
retaining the action of the goddess, explained her
motive as political ambition, and so, raising the
transaction to a higher level, fancied that he made
it more credible. I

A later writer, Herodorus of Heraclea, carried
the method of Hecataeus much further than
Acusilaus. It will be enough to illustrate the
character of his mythography by one instance.
The legend told that Apollo and Poseidon built
the walls of Troy for King Laomedon. According
to Herodorus, what really happened was this.
Laomedon built the walls in the ordinary way, but
he defrayed the expenses by the sacred treasures
which had been accumulated in the shrines of
Poseidon and Apollo. This is an example of the j
method of interpretation by which Herodorus
sought to explain away the miraculous.^

^ Murray has an interesting section on Herodorus in his History of
Or«6k Literature, pp. 127 sq. >

I MYTHOGRAPHERS 21

The work of Pherecydes then represents a
conservative reaction against the ration aUsm of
Hecataeus. The compilations of Acusilaus re-
present a compromise between rationahsm and
conservatism, but leaning heavily to the conserva-
tive side. Herodorus took up the rationalistic
method of Hecataeus, and developed it further.
Reason was a gainer by the work of Hecataeus ; it
is a landmark in the progress of criticism ; but the
Hecataean method could not advance positive
knowledge. It led, beyond Herodorus, to Palae-
phatus and Euemerus ; it led ultimately nowhere,
and I will not follow it. It was not the mytho-
graphers, but the Attic tragedians, whose criticism
of mythology was interesting and illuminating,
Aeschylus by moralising and Euripides by dis-
crediting it.

§ 4. Early Historians

Hecataeus, the historian, as distinguished from
the mythographer, had two immediate successors
who took up the subject of oriental history in
which he had shown the way. Charon of Lamp-
sac us ^ composed a history of Persia coming down
at least as far as the destruction of the fleet of
Mardonius by a storm off Mount Athos in 492 B.C.,
but probably including the invasion of Xerxes,
of which he was in the fullest sense a contem-

^ His Horoi (see below, p, 29) seems to have been published after
465-4 B.C. Compare Schwartz's article in Pauly-Wissowa. I cannot see
any proof that the Perdca was merely an excerpt from the H&roi.

22 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

porary.* His narrative was probably brief, but as
one of the first historical works which descended
to the writer's own age it possessed considerable
importance for the growth of historical composi-
tion. There was another writer of the same period
who was perhaps equally important and treated
the same subject as Charon. Dionysius of Miletus
likewise wrote a history of Persia which came
down to the death of Darius and included the
defeat at Marathon. But he followed this up by a
continuation which had still greater interest, en-
titled The Sequel to the Reign of Dariiis ; which
narrated the events of the Persian war.^

Now while these works of Charon and Dio-
nysius included very important episodes in the
history of Greece, they were properly and formally
histories of Persia. The first Greek writers who
wrote modern history wrote of Greece only inci-
dentally. Their theme was the great empire which
had subjugated a part of Greece and attempted
to subjugate it all. The circumstance that the
writers, who undertook to record the relations of
Greece with Persia, conceived those relations as
part of the history of the Persian state, had an
advantage for the unity of the subject. To write

* This is the most natural inference from Dionysius, Letter to Pompey,
3. 7 "EXKhvIkov re koI 'Kdpwvoi t^ aM)P xnrbdeaiv (as Herodotus) irpoeK-
SeduKdruf. (The Peraica of Hellanicus cannot have been prior to the
composition of Herodotus vii.-ix.)

^ One fragment of Dionysius (Persica) has been preserved, in the
scholia on Herodotus (cod. B) iii. 61 (6 fidyoi Hari^eidTji) : Aioyuffioi 6
MtXijfrioj Ilav^ovOr)v 6vofjLiL^€ff6ai tovtov \iyei. See Stein's Herodotus (ed.
1869-71), vol. ii. p. 438. I mention this soUtary fragment, because it does
not appear in Miiller's F.ILO. .

I CHARON AND DIONYSIUS 23

the history of Greece at almost any period without
dissipating the interest is a task of immense diffi-
culty, as any one knows who has tried, because
there is no constant unity or fixed centre to which
the actions and aims of the numerous states can be
subordinated or related. Even in the case of the
Persian invasion, one of the few occasions on
which most of the Greek cities were affected by
a common interest, though acting in various ways
and from various motives, it facilitated the task of
the narrator to polarise the events of the cam-
paigns by following the camp of the invader and
describing them as part of Persian history, though
with Hellenic sympathy. But this method of
treatment was a heritage from Hecataeus. The
impulse which led to the "Persian" books of
Charon and Dionysius came from the geographical
work of Hecataeus, and in all probability he was
one of their chief guides for oriental history up to
the Ionic revolt.

There is one other observation I would make
about the lost history of Dionysius. He was an
Ionian, writing after Ionia had been delivered from
the Persian yoke and had entered the confederacy
of Delos, with the prospect of becoming dependent
on Athens. The history of Ionia had not been
brilliant, politically, during the past hundred years.
It had been subdued first by Lydia and then by
Persia ; it had revolted from Persia and ignomin-
iously failed ; it had been compelled to aid its
master in attempting to enslave the free Hellenes.

24 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

It held a somewhat undignified position between
Persia and free Greece. The Ionian point of
view was therefore different, necessarily, from the
Spartan or the Athenian ; and the lonians had
some reason to feel that their actions were open to
misconstruction, and that a role, not too heroic,
would gain in their own telling. In any case the
story of the Great Invasion told at Miletus would
have a considerably different colouring from the
same story related at Susa or at Athens. We may
reasonably suspect that the history of the war by
Dionysius had a value for Ionian self-love ; that it
may have done less than justice to the victorious
Greeks; but that it probably did more justice to
Persia than the enemy would have received from
an Athenian writer. This Ionian logos of the
Persian war was, we may conjecture, a challenge
to unreserved admirers of Athens ; we shall see
m the next lecture how such a challenge was
taken up.

There is another writer of this early school of
historians whose name I cannot pass over, the
Carian Greek, Scylax of Caryanda. He was
employed by Darius to survey the course of the
river Indus, and he published an account of his
exploration. But he also wrote a work of con-
temporary history which centred round the figure
of his fellow-countryman, Heracleides, Prince of
Mylasae, who deserted the Persian cause and
helped the Greeks in the invasion of Xerxes. A
chance ray of light has recently been shed on

I SCYLAX 25

Heracleides by an Egyptian papyrus, which con-
tains a fragment of the work of the historian
Sosylus on the Second Punic war.^ This frag-
ment relates to a naval action, probably the battle
fought at the mouth of the Ebro in 217 B.C. The
author illustrates a point in the naval tactics by
comparing a certain action of Heracleides which
thwarted a Phoenician manoeuvre at the battle of
Artemisium. The episode is not mentioned by
Herodotus (though he refers to Heracleides else-
where) and it probably comes from the work of
Scylax.^ How far that work was what could be
called biographical we cannot tell, but it is at least
noteworthy as the earliest Greek book we know of
that made an individual the centre of a historical
narrative.

We shall not wrong these early historians if we
describe them as credulous and uncritical. The
able literary critic, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in
whose days many of their works were still in exist-
ence, says that their aim was simply to compile
and publish traditions and records, " without
adding or subtracting anything " ; and he appre-
ciates their style as clear, concise, appropriate to
the subject, bare of any artificial technique, though
not careless or ungraceful.^

' Edited, interpreted, and discussed by Wilcken, Hermes, xli. pp. 103
sqq., 1906.

^ On this work see Gutschmid, Kleine Schriften, iv, p. 144, who
thought it must be part of a large work, and Wilcken, op. cit. pp. 125-6.

' De Thucydide 5. Dionysius distinguishes three chronological
groups of historians : (1) Cadmus, whom he associates with Aristeas ;
(2) Eugeon, Deiochus, Eudemus, Democles, Hecataeus, Acusilaus,

26 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

The historical impulse initiated by Hecataeus
extended after a time beyond Ionia into the neigh-
bouring land of Lydia, which had been permeated
by Greek culture under the last Lydian kings.
The Lydian Xanthus composed in Greek a history
of his country for which he used local traditions
and perhaps consulted inscriptions in the palace of
Sardis.^ But in the development of historiography
he is less important than two other writers who,
like him, wrote during the latter half of the fifth
century, Antiochus of Syracuse and Hellanicus of
Lesbos. Antiochus composed a work on the
history of the western Greeks. He investigated
the early history of Sicily and Italy and the plan-
tation of the Greek colonies in those lands. So
far he was dealing with the subject of origins, in
which the early historians inherited an interest
from their epic predecessors, whose legends they
supplemented and modified by local traditions.
(The epic itself had here a late offshoot in the
poem which Panyassis of Halicarnassus produced
towards the middle of the fifth century on the
colonisation of the Ionian towns.) But the great

Charon, Melesagoras (perhaps Aioviaios 6 MtXi^crtos has fallen out after
'EKararoj 6 M.) ; (3) Hellanicus, Damastes, Xenomedes, Xanthus, xai &\\oi
ffix^oi. 450 B.C. would roughly mark the division between 2 and 3. The
work of Eugeon (Euagon) of Samos was appealed to c. 200 b.c. in a I
dispute between Samos and Priene which was decided by Rhodes (see
Greek Inscriptions in the British Mtiseum, cccciii. 109, 120). Deiochus
wrote a chronicle of Cyzicus. For Democles see Strabo i. 58 and xii.
551; for Damastes, F.H.G. ii. 64-7. The work which passed under
the name of (A)melesagorjis {F.H.G. ii. 21) was a fraud : see Wilamowits-
Mollendorff, Antigonos von Karystos, p. 24.
^ Gutschmid, Kleine Schri/ten, iv. pp. 307 sqq.

I ANTIOCHUS; HELLANICUS 27

significance of Antiochus is that he wrote the
modern and contemporary history of an important
section of the Greek world. A comprehensive
history of western Hellas was a step towards a
comprehensive history of Hellas as a whole.

His contemporary, Hellanicus of Lesbos, indi-
cated, and prepared the way for, a further advance ;
and it is important to grasp his significance in our
development. It has been usual to classify him
with the elder successors of Hecataeus, because he
wrote in Ionic Greek and covered practically all
the fields which they had covered. But he broke
new ground and became, as has been said, "the
corner-stone" of the historical tradition of the
Greeks. The range of his literary activity was
wide. He wrote on the history of Persia ; on the
customs of the barbarians ; on the mythical period
of Greece ; on the origins of the Greek cities in
Asia ; on the later history of Greece and especially
the history of Athens. His principal achievement
was the construction of a systematic chronology
which laid the foundations for subsequent research.

The subject of chronology must have been
pressed on the attention of Hecataeus, not only
by his research into Greek genealogies, but by
his study of Egyptian and oriental history. The
Greeks had not yet invented any method of
chronicling events. They had, as we saw, no
chronological records, except lists of names, like
those of the priestesses of Hera at Argos, of the
archons at Athens, of the priests of Poseidon at

28 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Halicarnassus. It was only rarely that a name in
these lists would yield the precise date of an event,
such as the archonship of Solon which supplied at
once the date of his reforms. Beyond these very
barren records the only data were the genealogies.
These furnished a very rough method of reckoning
periods of time by generations. But there must
have been considerable perplexity how the genera-
tion-unit should be calculated in terms of years.
Ultimately it became usual to reckon three
generations as equivalent to a hundred years, so
that the unit was roughly 33 years. But there
are early traces of another system which equated
the generation with 23 years, ^ a principle which
would yield widely different results. There was
another system based on 40 years. It is probable
that Hecataeus reckoned generally with genera-
tions, and not years, as his units, for the more
distant past. But for " modern " history he had
valuable auxiliary data of a precise kind. The
oriental monarchies had an exact method of reckon-
ing by means of the regnal years of the kings, and
records of events dated in this way were preserved.
These dates at once supplied synchronisms with
events in Greek history and fixed a number of
chronological landmarks, such as the capture of
Sardis. But it is not likely that chronology was
treated by Hecataeus more carefully or methodi-
cally than by Herodotus ; its fundamental import-
ance was not realised till later.

^ See Herodotus i. 7 : 22 generations = 505 years.

I HELLANICUS 29

The problem which Hellanicus undertook was
to reconstruct a complete chronicle of Greek
history, with the help of the genealogies, lists such
as that of the Athenian archons, and the oriental
dates. It is possible that attempts had been made
to work out this highly speculative problem already.
Charon had compiled a book called the H&roi of
Lampsacus. It is generally assumed to have been
a local history or chronicle of his native city. But
the fragments suggest that it had a wider range
than the affairs of Lampsacus. Perhaps the work
consisted of annals, dated by yearly magistrates of
Lampsacus, but recording, as well as local events,
other events also of general historical interest.
We have a parallel in a vast number of medieval
chronicles which possess at once a local and a
general side. Annals of Paderborn, for instance,
take special account of Paderborn affairs, but also
record the general history of the Western Empire.
This is only a conjecture,^ and in any case it was
reserved for Hellanicus, even if he had the help of
previous attempts, to achieve the construction of a
chronicle which in its main lines found general
acceptance, and influenced the course of subsequent
chronological study. He made the list of the
Argive priestesses of Hera the framework of his
general chronicle of Greece.^ He also compiled a
special chronicle of Attic history, in which events
were naturally arranged under the archon years

^ Of Seeck ; see Klio iv. pp. 289-90. We have no data to conjectixre
the scope of Eugeon's Horoi of Samos.

' Kullmer refers p. 52 to the Ambracian-Acamanian war of 429 b.c.

80 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

from the year 683-2 onward. In its first form,
this work came down to the year 411. After the
termination of the Peloponnesian war the author
continued it to 404 B.c.^ The notices of events
were brief, but it was not without a certain poli-
tical colouring, evincing sympathy with Athenian
democratic patriotism.

Without entering upon a minute criticism of
the method of Hellanicus, it is enough to say that,
mistaking the character of mythical traditions, he
erected an ingenious edifice on foundations which
had no solidity. The most perfect genealogies
could not even approximately determine absolute
dates ; and the genealogies were full of inconsist-
encies which had to be overcome by arbitrary
interpolations and manipulations. Moreover, quite
recent events, which had not been recorded at the
time, might present almost insuperable difficulties
to a chronographer. One case, which we can
control, will illustrate how dangerous the procedure
of HeUanicus was. If he had consulted a certain
inscription, which we are fortunate enough to have
recovered, he could have found that several military
events which he chronicled occurred in the same
archonship, corresponding to the latter half of
459 B.C. and the former half of 458 B.C. Ignorant
of this authentic evidence, he distributed these
events over three archonships.^ Yet these events

* See Lehmann-Haupt in Klio vi. pp. 197 sqq. Apollodorus used the
earlier edition.

2 We can be virtually certain that the chronology of Ephorus and
Diodorus for the period of the Fifty Years depended on Hellanicus, so far

I HELLANICUS 81

must have happened within his own hfetime.
His whole chronology of the thirty-five years
after the Persian war was arbitrary ; and it
illustrates how in the absence of records pre-
cise chronology is hopeless. The instance of
error which I have given suggests another
observation. There were numerous stones at
Athens, officially inscribed and precisely dated,
from which, if they were all preserved, a modern
student would probably construct without difficulty
and with absolute certainty an exact chronicle of
Athenian history in the fifth century. But it
never occurred to Hellanicus to look for them,
and in this he was only like most other Greek
historians. The Greeks used such records when/^
they came across them, but as a rule they did not
seek them out systematically. Was the labour of
deciphering them too laborious ? It is remarkable
that Thucydides describes a sixth-century inscrip- .
tion, which he quotes, as written "in faint char- )
acters " ; yet a portion of that same inscription
which has survived seems to a modern epigrapher
quite clear, after more than two thousand years.

When we realise the nature of the data and the
methods of the first chronologists whose ingenious
constructions determined the received tradition,
we shall hardly be prepared to dispute the con-
as Ephorus may not have modified it by the indications of Thucydides.
For Thucydides and Hellanicus seem to have been the only fifth-century
historians who recorded that period. Diodorus distributes over the years
460-59, 459-8, 458-7 events in Egj-pt, at Halieis, and Aegina, and
Megara, which, the well-known Erechtheid stone {CI. A. i. 433) instructs
us, occurred in the same civil year (459-8).

32 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect,

elusion at which Mahaffy arrived more than
twenty-five years ago, that there are no well-
estabhshed exact dates in Greek history before the
seventh century.^ For the seventh and even for
the sixth there are only a few. Nay, we can hardly
say that a clear and definite chronicle begins before
445 B.C., the year of the Thirty Years' Peace.

It is to be deplored that the early historians
failed to realise how desirable it was to reckon
time by a fixed chronological era. The practical 1
Romans dated historical events from the Founda-
tion of the City. The Greeks might have adopted,
for instance, the year of the invasion of Xerxes.
They could have dated Before and After, Trph rSiv
MtjSikwv and fiera ra MijBiKa, as we do with our
era. But the most natural, and perhaps the best,
chronological starting-point would have been the
Trojan war. It did not matter in the least that
the actual date of that event could not be known
with certainty, so long as a definite year was fixed
upon. Our era is not the true date of the Nativity;
the true date cannot be ascertained ; but this does
not affect the utility of the conventional era. Now
as a matter of fact the Trojan war was occasion-
ally used, as a sort of reference date, by fifth-
century historians,^ and it is much to be regretted
that Hellanicus did not systematically adopt this

^ The subject of the early list of Olympian victors, constructed by
Hippias of Elis without trustworthy data, has recently been discussed by
A. Korte {Hermes xxxix. pp. 224 sqq., 1904), who confirms in essential
points the conclusions of Mahaffy.

2 Herodotus ii. 145 ad fin.

I HELLANICUS 88

method of reckoning. The years of magistrates
or priests are not only clumsy, but convey
no chronological idea. For it is to be observed
that when dates are expressed by cardinal numbers
proceeding from a fixed year, not only is calculation
simplified, but the numbers present to the mental
vision a clear historical perspective.

But recognising the defects both in the mechan-
ism and in the methods of Hellanicus, who
attempted the impossible, we must give him credit
for having framed the ideal of a chronological
system which should embrace all the known facts
of history ; and if he established many erroneous
dates, it is probable that he also rescued some
that were correct.

§ 5. Summary

To sum up. (1) The historical study of their
past by the Greeks arose out of the epic tradition
and was a continuation of the work of the later
epic poets. The tradition of the Homeric and
Hesiodic poets maintained its control to the end.
What we would designate as the post-mythical
or historical period overlapped by means of gene-
alogies with the mythical period ; the existing
families of Greece were connected in line of
blood with the heroes and thereby with the gods.
The genealogical principle, lying at the base of
their historical reconstruction, hindered the Greeks
from drawing a hard and fast line between the
mythical and the historical age. The historians

D

34 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

who approached the subject never got beyond
criticism of details and rationalistic interpretation
of miracles. But (2) at the very time when the
study of mythological tradition began to assume a
more critical character, the interest of the Greeks
expanded to the "modern" history and institu-
tions of non-Greek states, and here they were in
a region not mythical, but historical. This intel-
lectual movement originated in Ionia ; its main
cause was the Persian conquest, and the resulting
contact of Ionian thinkers with oriental history.
The rise of Ionian science not only promoted the
spirit of criticism, but also created an interest in
geography, for the study of which the new political
status of Ionia furnished opportunities ; but it was
principally the new vision of oriental history that
brought to birth Greek historiography. It was
from the "modern" history of the East that the
Greeks went on to study the "modern" history of
Hellas. And the struggle with Persia in the first
twenty years of the fifth century impelled them
to begin to write histories of their own time.
Further, as I will attempt to show more fully in
the next lecture, their contact with the traditions
of non-Greek lands within the Persian empire
suggested to the Greeks a new kind of criticism of
their own mythical traditions. In all three fields
of ancient, modern, and contemporary history, as
well as in the allied sphere of geography, Hecataeus
was a pioneer ; his originality lay in responding to
the stimulus from the non-Greek world.

I SUMMARY 85

The work of Hellanicus, who conceived the idea
of a general history of Greece and laid the slippery
foundations of its chronology, has brought us to a
date from which we shall have to retrace our steps
to examine the work of a greater writer than any
of those who have claimed our attention to-day.
We have only considered those points of light,
obscured by time, which form the Ionian constella-
tion ; we have yet to examine a star of the first
magnitude which is still as luminous as ever.
Herodotus (we must not call him an Ionian) wiU
be the subject of the next lecture.

LECTURE II

HERODOTUS

In the last lecture the necessities of our subject
obliged us to consider works of which only scraps
have survived, and of which we can form only dim
ideas by groping methods, although we may feel
tolerably confident as to the general character
and value of the literature to which they belong.
The names of their authors are forgotten by the
world, and their chief function now is to tantalise
the special student of literature or history. To-day
we come to a work which time has not been
allowed to destroy or diminish.

Of the life of Herodotus, son of Lyxes, of
Halicarnassus, we know hardly anything except
'what may be gleaned from his own statements. •
Bom early in the fifth century, he left his birth-
place before 454 b.c., banished by Lygdamis the
tyrant, who put his cousin Panyassis, the epic
poet, to death. He stayed apparently for some
time in Samos, and then went to Athens, whence
he proceeded to Italy as one of the first citizens
of the new colony of Thurii (443 B.C.). He sur-
vived the first years of the Peloponnesian war

36

LECT. II HERODOTUS 37

(431-0 B.c.^). Into this framework we have to
fit his travels, which included the coasts of the
Euxine, Babylon, Phoenicia, Egypt, and probably
Cyrene. It is not necessary to discuss the dis-
puted subject of the chronology of his journeys.
I need only say that his most important journeys,
those to Babylonia and Egypt, were probably
undertaken in the later period of his life, while
he was a citizen of ThuriL The years which
elapsed between his banishment from his native
city and his departure for his new home seem to
have been spent in Greece, perhaps chiefly at
Athens, and to have been devoted, as we shall
see, to investigating and composing the story of
the invasion of Xerxes. Though he may naturally
have visited Athens again, on his way to or from
the East, there is no evidence to entitle us to
presume, as some have thought, that he deserted
Thurii permanently and dwelled at Athens during
the last years of his life.^

The argument of his history is a. pflrrativp nf
the relations between the Greeks and the oriental
PQwers from the accession of Croesus to the
capture of Sestos in 478 b.c. — a " modern " history
in the fullest sense of the term. The division into
nine Books is not due to the author himself, for

^ There are passages which cannot have been written before 431-0
B.C. vii. 233 (cp. Thucydides ii. 2) and ix. 73 (cp. Thuc. ii. 23) imply 431
B.C. ; vii. 137 (cp. Thuc. ii. 67) implies 430 b.c Cp. alsoiii. 160 ; and v. 77.
The reference to Artaxerxes in vi. 98 does not imply that the words were
written after his death (425 b.c.) ; cp. Macan's note ad loc.

^ Compare the pertinent remarks of Wachsmuth, Rheinisches Museum^
Ivi. 215-8 (1901).

38 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

in his day such divisions had not yet come into
fashion. But the Alexandrine editor who was
responsible for it was a man of extraordinary
insight. His distribution perfectly exhibits the
construction of the book and could not be im-
proved by any change. But it can be rendered
more perspicuous by observing that_eaeh_Qf_the
nine Borjll-iS- truly a fiub-div^RJon and thnt thft ^
primary partition is a threefold one.^ The work
falls naturally into three sections, each consisting
of three parts. The first section^ or triad of
Books, comprises the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses,
and the accession of Darius ; the second deals with
the reign of Darius ; the third with that of
Xerxes. The first is mainly concerned with
Asia including Egypt ; the second with Europe ;
the third with Hellas. The first displays the rise
and the triumphs of the power of Persia ; the
last relates the defeat of Persia by Greece ; while
the middle triad represents a chequered picture,
Persian failure in Scythia and at Marathon, Greek
failure in Ionia. And each of the nine sub-
divisions has a leading theme which constitutes
a minor unity. C}tus is the theme of the first
Book, Egypt of the second, Scythia of the fourth,
the Ionian rebellion of the fifth, Marathon of the
sixth. The seventh describes the invasion of
Xerxes up to his success at Thermopylae ; the
eighth relates the reversal of fortune at Salamis ;
the final triumphs of Greece at Plataea and Mycale

' This has been well brought out by Macan.

II HERODOTUS 39

occupy the ninth. In the third alone the unity is
less marked ; yet there is a central interest in the
dynastic revolution which set Darius on the throne.
Thus the unity of the whole composition sharply
displays itself in three parts, of which each again
is threefold.^ The simplicity with which this
architectural symmetry has been managed, with-
I] out any apparent violence, constraint, or formality,
^ was an achievement of consummate craft. The^
writer's management of the digressions, for which j
he is notorious, is hardly less striking^ exhibiting
a rare skill in the choice of the best and perhaps
the only fitting places to stow away loose material
he wished to make use of.

^t, perfect q.s ig the architectural unity of the
work of Herodotus, it would seem that the plan
as it was finally carried out was not conceived
when he commenced to write, and that the unity
was achieved not in conformity to a design
thought out from the beginning, but by a process
of expansion due to an after-thought. There is a
variety of internal evidence which points con-
vincingly to the conclusion that the last three
Books were composed before the first six, and
there are indications that he wrote this portion
between 456 and 445 B.C., before he began his
travels.^ The natural in^tprence is that he origin-
ally contemplated no mere than a history of the

^ In the last part the unity is much more marked than the triplicity ;
in fact, the division of Book vn. from Book viii. is somewhat arbitrary,

^ The most complete appreciation of the evidence will be found in
the Introduction to Macau's ed. of Herodotus, vii.-ix, (§ 7 and § 8).

40 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

invasion of Xerxes ; and that it was in the course
of his travels that he conceived the idea of a
larger work, of which the " Invasion of Xerxes "
should form the finale. The idea doubtless
shaped itself gradually ; and the first six Books
were not composed in the order in which they
stand. But the author has worked with such
skill that only a searching analysis has detected
the series of facts which demonstrate the priority
/ of the last three Books ^ and make it clear that
the Persian war was his original inspiration^.,^

At whatever moment the idea of expanding
his original history to its fuller compass presented
itself, whether it was suggested by his journeys
or prompted him to become a traveller, it was
certainly connected closely with his travels, and
the occurrence of long geographical excursus is
one of the most striking features of the expansion.

So strongly marked indeed is the geographical
element, so long are the geographical sections, in
the work of Herodotus, that some critics have
been led to think that considerable parts of it
were originally intended to form part of a

^ Some few additions were made subsequently : thus in vii. 93 and 1 08
there are references to passages in the books which are earlier in order
but were later in composition. It is probable that the whole work never
received a final revision, and this would be sufficient to explain the unful-
filled promise of vii. 213, which is the insufficient but only real argument
for the hypothesis that the ninth Book is not complete. [How gratuitous
this hypothesis is, Macan shows at length, ib. § 6. ] On the other hand it
seems not improbable that Herodotus intended to include in the early
portion of his work a summary of Babylonian history {'A(xa-vpioi \6yoi) i
this seems to me more likely than that in i. 106 and 184 he is referring
to another work.

II

HERODOTUS 41

geography, and were afterwards incorporated iiL
his history. There is nothing that compels us to
adopt a hypothesis of this kind. Association with
geography was a characteristic of the early
historical literature of the Greeks, and these
excursus in Herodotus attest the influence of the
Hecataean school, and were natural in the work
of a historian who was himself a traveller^ And
it is worth observing that when he was writing,
both Egypt and Scythia, the subjects of his
longe^r historico -geographical digressions, had a
particular practical interest for the Athenians ;
and of the Greek public it was unqjiestionably
tlie Athenians to whom thg historian d^^igngd
his work pre-eminently to ap,p£a]L I need only
remind you of the Athenian adventure in Egypt
in the middle of the fifth century and of the
voyage of Pericles in the Euxine Sea. It has
even been conjectured that this Periclean expedi-
tion (444 B.C.) was the occasion of the historian's
visit to the Pontic regions. However this may
be, it is not insignificant, in judging these digres-
sions, that Egypt and Scythia possessed, at the
time Herodotus wrote, an interest of a political
kind, subordinate indeed to that of Persia, but
distinctly actual.

It is also to be noted that the digressions in
general had an artistic justification. They are an
epic feature, deliberately designed ; ^ one of the
epic notes of the work. Homer was the literary

^ He says expressly that irpo<r07JKai are a feature of his work, iv. 30.

42 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

master of Herodotus ; without imitating him in
any obvious way, the first great master of prose
studied and caught the secrets of his effects. JBy
means ojP_^digressioqs he achieved epic variety.
We cannot do better than read the observations^
of the accompUshed Uterary critic Dionysius.'^j
"Herodotus knew that every narrative of great'
length wearies the ears of the hearer, if it dwell
without a break on the same subject ; but, if^
pauses are introduced at intervals, it affects the
,mind agreeably. And so he desired tc lend
variety to his work and imitated Homer. If we
take up his book, we admire it to the last syllable,
and always want more."

Besides diversifying his work with digressions
and episodes, Herodotus adopted another epic
feature, not less characteristic. Like Homer, the
historian makes his characters speq,ki Hr intro-
duces not_^ly shortjand pointed ennversfltianSj
but jdiaTogues and orations of considerable length*
For instance, Xerxes, Mardonius, and Artabanus
make each a speech in Council before it is decided
to invade Greece. I may recall the conversations
of Solon with Croesus, of Xerxes with Artabanus
and with Demaratus ; and the speech made by
the Corinthian envoy when the Spartans were
considering the policy of forcing Athens to restore
the Peisistratids.^ If the historian were charged

* Letter to Pompeiiis, 3. Longinus calls Herodotus d^i/ptxc^raros, De
subl. 13. 4. '

"^ V. 92. Compare Stahl's article mentioned in the Bibliography.

\^

n HERODOTUS 43

with abusing this artifice by introducing in the
Corinthian envoy's speech a long episode from
Corinthian history, which is really quite irrelevant,
he could appeal to the discourses of Phoenix and
Nestor in Homer ; and this case illustrates the
fact that in introducjngjiBeeches he was influenced
by the Ionian epic and not by the Athenian drama.
It is impossible to say whether any of the older
prose writers had adopted this practice, which
makes the scenes vivid and the work alive. The
bits of Hecataeus we possess are too brief to
judge ; but I may note that in one case at least
he put words into the mouth of an actor.^

The Homeric qualities of Herodotus, which
communicate to his history an epic flavour, accord
with the object to produce a work which like
Homer should fascinate the minds of men. It
was his aim to hold his audience or readers
entertained ; to do for his own world in prose
what Homer had done for the ancient world in
numbers. We cannot tell how far any of his
prose predecessors had sought to make their
works attractive or entertaining,^ or whether the
influence of epic poetry affected their method
of presentation. But we may confidently say
that Herodotus was the first who discerned in
" modern " history the possibilities of a treatment

^ Fr. 353 (Longinus, De mbl. 27). Cp. Mahaffy, Prose Writers,
i, p. 33. The statement in Marcellinus, Vita Thuc. 38, has not much
weight.

2 Thucydides i. 23 (\oyoypd<poi) is not, conclusive ; he was thinking
chiefly, perhaps only, of Herodotus.

44 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

which was epic, and not Hesiodic but Homeric,
in spirit and style.

His theme, the struggle of Greece with the
Orient, possessed for him a deeper meaning than
the political result of the Persian war. It was
the contact and collision of two different types of
civilisation, of peoples of two different characters
and different political institutions. In the last
division of his work, where the final struggle of
Persia and Greece is related, this contrast between
the slavery of the barbarian and the liberty of the
Greek, between oriental autocracy and Hellenic
constitutionalism, is ever present and is forcibly _
brought out. But the contrast of Hellenic with
}\ oriental culture pervades the whole wqrkj it_
I jllillfor^mS- th£_.iiiiity_of_the.„external theme with the
peeper unity of an inner meaning. It is the key-
note of Uiejiistory of Herodotus., The digressions
and stories which delay the action, besides their
intrinsic interest, and besides their epic use as
pleasant pauses, have also the value of sounding
that note, and of contributing distinctly, but
without emphasis or iteration, towards impressing ^
that contrast on the reader's mind. The interview,
for example, of Croesus with Solon, the self-con-
fident Eastern potentate with the thoughtful, self-
controlled Greek, strikes this chord loudly ; and mogj ■
V of the oriental and Hellenic stories are calculated
to suggest the ^^giitithesi^ .which. findsJts supreme
^PI?ssigru_j,nd Js_in^QJ£.jelabprately wought jo.ut,
in the final collision of the Persian wars.

II

HERODOTUS 45

In the execution of this conception the Hero-
dotean work has assumed the character of a study
in the history of civihsation. Just as the Homeric
poems present a large and living picture of the
culture of ancient Greece, so the history of Hero-
dotus gives us panoramic views of the Hellenic
civilisation of the sixth century, and describes the
cultures of all the Eastern peoples who directly or
indirectly come within range.

And if it isa_study in th^ history of civilisfltinn,
we may also say that it has certain features of a
universal history. It is not universal either in
space or in time. Not in time ; it does not
attempt to go back far in Greek history, and only
touches upon the ancient period incidentally. Not
in space, for it hardly touches upon the Western
Greeks at all, and does not include what Hecataeus
would have supplied about the peoples of the
Western Mediterranean. But it has the higher

.quality of what we mean by universal history or
Weltgeschichte, infocussing under one point of '
view^_and fitting into a connected narrative, the
histories of the various peoples who came into i
relations with one another, within a given range ;
so that_they are drawn out of th^ir isolfttior) a,nd :

Recognised to have a meaning, greater or less, in/
t^ie_common_histoix of "t^an. Within that range,
which is determined by his theme, Herodotus
is irreproachably comprehensive ; and his book,
though he never formulates the idea, is a lesson .
in the unity of history.

-<S

46 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Although Herodotus does not enter upon the
history of the heroic period, he has frequently;,
occasion to refer to mythical tradition, andJiere
he shows himself distinctly^^_j;ceptic. Not that
he was a rationalist in regard to theology generally,
or had any clear and consistent philosophical view.
He looked upon^uman lifers under the control
of superhuman - pawerg^-jvKhQ. Jn exercising their
incalculahle-government were prompted by motives
of envy and nemesis or righteous anger, who acted
to some extent on principles of justice and retribu^
^tioii,_aiid who might communicate knowledge -to
men by means of ora,cles>_ portents, or dreams.
But any further converse of gods with men, any
divine appearances alleged to have happened in
recent times, Herodotus is not prepared to accept,
though he is never dogmatic. His philosophy was
not strong enough to deny that the gods had ever
carried on the sort of intercourse with men that is
described in the epics, or generated human progeny;
for his ultimate line between the divine and the
human was not fast. But it was a great comfort
for common sense and everyday experience, to push
the age in which such things could happen as far
back as possible. Herodotus reveals unmistak-
ably his incredulity about all the mythical wonders
in which, according to tradition, ancestors of
living people, some fifteen or twenty generations
back, played bright or shady parts. He accepted
the genealogies, but when he got to Perseus or
Heracles, he did not regard them as sons of a god.

II HERODOTUS 47

Heracles is the son of Amphitryon, Helen is the
daughter of Tyndareus. Sometimes he relates
legends or tells tales involving superhuman agency,
but he never takes any responsibility for them, and
occasionally treats them with delicate irony. He
mentions a legend of the Thessalians that the
ravine through which the Peneius makes its way
to the sea was wrought by Poseidon. "Their
tale is plausible ; and any one who thinks that
Poseidon shakes the earth and that clefts produced
by earthquakes are the works of that god, would
on seeing this mountain-ravine ascribe it to Posei-
don. For it appeared to me to be the result of an
earthquake." Gibbon might have taken lessons in
the art of irony from Herodotus as well as from
Pascal. Consider again the admirable caution with
which he speaks of the divine snake said to live
on the Athenian Acropolis. " The Athenians say
that a great snake lives in the Sanctuary as
guardian of the citadel ; and they present a honey-
cake every month as to a creature existing " (w?
iovTi). This commits him to nothing.

But though disposed to accept only what
experience led him to regard as possible, in any
given case, Herodotus, as I have said, did not draw
theoretically a hard and fast line between the
human and the divine ; and he did not_reject_as
ridiculous the notion tha^t_qne_time^pds moved
vTsibly on tHe earth and consorted with men.
WHy then"^id^ he r^ect the divine parentage of
heroes like Heracles and Perseus ? It is important

48 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

to comprehend the reason for this scepticism which
he derived from Hecataeus. I touched on this
point in the first lecture. It was not due to the
canons of Ionian science or to the influence of
Ionian philosophy. It was due to the study of
comparative mythology which had opened for
Hecataeus a new perspective of the world's history.
The Egyptian studies which Herodotus pursued in
the footsteps of the Milesian traveller taught him
that human history in that country went back for
thousands of years before the age of the gods was
reached. The Egyptians, for instance, had a god
corresponding to Heracles, and they reckoned that
17,000 years had elapsed since he had appeared in
Egypt Hence the conclusion which Herodotus
accepts that there was an ancient god Heracles,
but that he must be sharply distinguished from
the human son of Amphitryon, ancestor of the
Heracleidae.^ The Greek tradition that the age in
which gods walked the earth was still current some
eight or nine hundred years ago could not be true.
For even apart from the suggestions of compara-
tive mythology, it was inadmissible to suppose that
while Egypt was in a prosaic age of mere men,
Greece was trodden by deities and the scene of
miracles ; and the Egyptian tradition was vouched
for by records. The argument demolished the
received mythology of the heroic age so far as it
was superhuman.

^ Similarly Pan son of Penelope, Dionysus son of Semele, are to be
distinguished from the synonymous gods.

II

HERODOTUS 49

Herodotus deserves credit for having accepted
the argument, to which contemporary writers like
Pherecydes were deaf; and if he asks pardon from
the gods and heroes for his boldness, this does not
mean that he felt hesitation or reluctance ; it was
merely an insincere and graceful genuflexion. He
was doing what a Christian preacher sometimes
does, when having delivered an extremely heterodox
sermon he winds up with a formal homage to
orthodox dogma. Herodotus is extremely cour-
±eous, perhaps ironically courteous, to both parties.
He says, as it were, to the gods and heroes,
" Please, do not be angry with me, — supposing you
to exist. But at this time of day, you know, one
must really draw the line somewhere." On the
other hand he says to the infidels who disbelieve
in oracular prophecy, " I know you will think me
credulous. But still in this case the evidence is so
remarkably clear that I do not see my way to
resisting it."^ The mythological argument, how-
ever, of which I am speaking was not due to
Herodotus himself. He may have put it in his
own way, and added some points, but he owed it,
as I have said, to Hecataeus. It has long been
recognised that his description of Egypt is not an
original work, put together exclusively from his \.e.o^-^
own observations and inquiries, but largely repro-
duces the account which Hecataeus had given
in his Map of the World. When Herodotus
visited Egypt, he doubtless had the book of

1 Cp. viii. 7T.

1:

50 ANCIENT GREEK HISTOUIANS lect.

Hecataeus with him, and used it like a barrister's
brief for cross-examining the temple-servants and
guiding him in his investigations. He added
corrections and new information, but the great
Ionian supphed the groundwork. He does not
say so ; he does not acknowledge his debt to
Hecataeus ; for, as you know, the ancients had
very different views from the moderns about
literary obligations. It was not the fashion or
etiquette to name your authorities except for some
special reason, — for instance, to criticize them, or
to display your own learning ; and you were not
considered a plagiarist if you plundered somebody
else's work without mentioning his name. Heca-
taeus brought out the importance of the Nile by
the striking phrase that Egypt was the gift of the
river ; Herodotus adopts the phrase as if it were
his own. One of the most convincing tests by
which suspected plagiarism can be established is
the occurrence of the same mistakes. Now Hero-
dotus reproduces the errors which Hecataeus had
committed about the hippopotamus. But there
are a whole series of points in which we can trace
the contact between the two writers in regard to
Egypt. As for the mythology, we are left in no
doubt because Herodotus names Hecataeus in this
connexion. " When Hecataeus was in Thebes he
told his pedigree to the priests and connected him-
self with a god in the sixteenth generation. And
the priests did to him what they did to me, though
/ did not relate my pedigree. They took him into

II HERODOTUS 51

the hall of the temple and showed him wooden
statues of the high priests. The high priesthood
descends from father to son, and each high priest
sets up his own statue in his lifetime. They
counted 345 statues, and they set this genealogy
against that of Hecataeus, but they did not derive
Jtheir pedigree from a god or a hero.J]^^

The author's motive in naming his predecessor
here is, obviously, to rally him for having "given
himself away" by stating his own genealogy and
divine ancestry to the priests. "/ was not so
incautious " is the implication. But we have no
right to infer that Hecataeus had not already
drawn the sceptical conclusions which Herodotus
explains. The sceptical words with which Heca-
taeus introduced his Genealogies show that he was
not deaf to the lessons in history which he learned
in Egyptian temples. His very expression, when
he says that " the logoi of the Hellenes are absurd,"
not "the stories of the poets," suggests the con-
trast of non-Hellenes whose logoi he had compared.
The distinction of what the Greeks say from what
the Persians, Phoenicians, or Egyptians say often
recurs in Herodotus, and is an echo, I believe,
from Hecataeus.^ But we have another proof.
Herodotus cites the Egyptian priests as dating
the age of the gods in relation to the reign of

1 ii. 143.

"^ When Herodotus cites what ol "EXXtj^s j say, it is sometimes assumed
that he means Hecataeus (or some other Ionian writer). In that case he
would have said 61 "Iwces. He is really quoting criticisms of Hecataeus
on orEXXijj'es, that is, on the current mythology of epic tradition.

52 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lectt.

Amasis. As the visit of Hecataeus to Egypt
would have fallen not long after the death of
Amasis, the dating indicates that Herodotus was
copying the statement of Hecataeus.

The note of scepticism, perhaps we may say the
characteristic note of Ionian scepticism, is struck
in the first paragraphs of the Herodotean work.
It opens with the statement of a theory that the
wars of the Greeks and Persians were the mani-
festation of a secular antagonism between Asia
and Europe — what our English historian. Freeman,
was fond of calling the Eternal Question. This at
least is the abstract way we should formulate the
tenor of the statement which I may abbreviate as
follows : — " The quarrel began thus : Phoenician
traders carried off from Argos lo the king's
daughter. Subsequently Greek adventurers from
Crete carried off the princess Europa from Tyre.
The next aggression came from the Greek side,
when the Argonauts ravished Medea from Colchis.
The Asiatic reply to this outrage was the rape of
Helen by Paris. The Trojan war which followed
generated in Asia a feeling of hostility to the
Greeks, and the Persian war was the ultimate
issue of this feeling." But the theory was not
originated by Herodotus. He disavows all respon-
sibility. It was a theory of the Persians, he tells
us, and he states it only to set it aside in his
ironical way.

The whole passage reads as if it might be the
condensation of a friendly discussion between a

f^

II

HERODOTUS 53

Greek and a Persian as to the responsibility for
the Persian war. It was undeniable that the
Persians and not the Greeks had been the aggres-
sors ; the conquest of Ionia by Cyrus had been the
beginning. The Persian advocate could only
remove the blame from Asia by going farther
back. The summary I gave of the argument does
not reproduce its flavour, and I will take the
liberty of throwing it into the form of a dialogue.

Persian. The Greeks had no business in Asia.
They belong to Europe, and they should have
stayed there. Their expedition against Troy was
the first trespass ; it began their encroachments
on a continent which belongs to Asiatic peoples of
whom the Persians are the heirs.

Greek. Oh, but you are forgetting that on that
occasion the Trojans were the offenders ; Paris
carried off Helen.

Persian. That was no sufficient reason ; but
even if it were, the act of Paris was only a
reprisal for the Greek crimes of carrying off
Medea and Europa. And the Asiatics were far
too sensible to make a causa belli of such fooHsh
elopements.

Greek. Well, if you go back so far, you must
go back farther still. What about the rape of lo
from Argos ?

Persian. Well, yes, I admit it. That was a
Phoenician business, and we Persians must allow
that the Phoenicians began the mischief, though
we hold you really responsible, through your folly

54 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

in taking such an affair seriously. Only fools
would make war on account of such escapades.
Men of the world know that, if these women were
carried off, they were not more reluctant than
they sl^ould be.^

Evidently we have here an invention of Ionian
esprit. The nature of the argument, dealing as it
does entirely with Greek legend, shows that the
Persian was a fictitious disputant ; and the attribu-
tion of the theory to a Persian is an effect of
literary subtlety quite in the manner of Voltaire.
Though Herodotus thought little of this specula-
tion about ancient wrongs, he seems to have taken
it as seriously meant. " Whatever we think about
all this," he says, " I will begin with the first Eastern
monarch who undoubtedly committed injustice!
against Greece, Croesus, who subdued Ionia withouti
provocation." But it is highly significant that hei
should place in the portals of his work a speculation i
which set mythical tradition in a ridiculous light, y

The passage I have discussed is one of several
that evince those acute tendencies in the Hellenic
mind which culminated in the movement of the
Sophists. For instance, the story of the wife of
Intaphernes. She chose to save her brother rather
than her husband or children, on the ground that
husband and children might be replaced but she
could never have another brother. That is a clever
Ionian subtlety ; there is no reason to suppose that
it was invented in the period of the Sophists. Or

* Plutarch, Ilepi t-^j 'Upobbrov KUKorjOdas, 2, takes this quite seriously.

fr^

u

HERODOTUS

55

take the demonstration of the power of custom by
Darius. He dismayed some Greeks by the ques-
tion what they would take to eat their dead
fathers, and then equally horrified some Indians
of a tribe who ate dead parents, by asking them
how much they would take to cremate theirs.
The immense power of custom was an observation
redolent of the age of the Wise Men ; . Pindar,
whom Herodotus quotes, designated Custom as
king of the world ; and the idea afterwards became
the basis of sophistic theories. The story quoted
by Herodotus is a drastic Ionian illustration.

Again, the famous discussion of the comparative
merits of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy by
the seven Persian conspirators who overthrew the
false Smerdis, belongs also to pre-sophistic specu-
lation. It is obviously a fiction ; for the discussion
was appropriate in the Greek world, but was quite
out of place in Persia. But it was not a fiction of
Herodotus, for he states expressly (careful though
he generally is not to commit himself) that these
opinions were really uttered by the Persian noble-
men, although some of the Greeks consider this
incredible. The historian was taken in, just as he
was taken in by the persiflage about the rapes of
the fair women of legend. There can hardly be
much doubt that some publicist threw his re-
flexions on the comparative merits of constitutions
into the shape of this historical deliberation. The
distinction of three fundamental types of constitu-
tion is older than the period of the Sophists ; it is

X

56 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

recognised in an ode of Pindar not later than 473
B.C., and it was then probably a commonplace.^
We may suspect that we have to do with some
publication of the first half of the fifth century.

Now there is one feature common to these
passages. Greek ideas and reflexions are trans-
ferred to an Eastern setting or connected with
Persian history. Their origin was assuredly
Ionian.^ They betray the naive interest of the
lonians in their masters, and show the Greek mind
projecting its own reflexions into a world of which
it had only a half-knowledge, with the instinct
of making that world more interesting and sym-
pathetic.^

But I must return to the scepticism of Herodo-
tus. I have already observed that in the historical
post - Homeric period the mythopoeic faculty of
the Greeks did not slumber, but myth now took
the form of the historical anecdote, or, as the
Germans call it, " historische Novelle." Here

» Pyth. ii. 87-8.

^ The clear allusion of Otanes, in his defence of democracy, to the
Athenian constitution under the lot-system does not necessitate by any
means an Athenian origin. — It may be conjectured that the peculiar
privileged position which Otanes and his descendants were said to have
held in the Persian realm suggested the idea of transferring this singularly
Hellenic discussion to Susa. Otanes, it is said, was exempted from sub-
jection to the kings because, though he was the leading organizer of the
conspiracy, he resigned all claims to the throne which Darius secured.
He was thus neither ruler nor subject, an anomalous position which in
Greece had a sort of parallel in the membership of a democracy. Hence
the suggestion that Otanes believed in democracy, and, when he did not
convince his fellow-conspirators, obtained for himself personally and his
family the freedom which a democracy bestows.

' I have been here expressing dissent from the view of some critics that
the passages enumerated indicate sophistic influence.

I

II HERODOTUS 57

they showed consummate felicity in constructing
stories with historical background, historical actors,
historical motives, and possessing, many of them,
a perpetual value because they are seasoned with
worldly wisdom and enshrine some criticism of life.
These tales differ from the old myths not only in
the tendency to point a moral, but also in the
circumstance that for the most part they do not-
involve physical impossibilities, though they may
imply highly improbable coincidences, or what we
may call psychical or political impossibilities. The
work of Herodotus is richly furnishec^ with these
tales ; he had a wonderful flair for a good„story_;
and the gracious garrulity with which he tells his-
torical anecdotes is one of the charms which will
secure him readers till the world's end. Gibbon
happily observed that Herodotus "sometimes
writes for children and sometimes for philo-
sophers " ; the anecdotes he relates often appeal
to both. T^p acn^ptg thf^jTa generally at their fac^
value. fl.nd m^ost of them have been taken as more
or^less literally true till very recent times. The
story of the intercourse between Croesus and
Solon was rejected as fiction only because it seemed
impossible to reconcile it with chronology.^ But
we are now more sceptical about good stories of
this type, and we have come to see how often they

^ It may be held, however, that this is still an open question. A
fragment of an anonymous Dialogue, discovered by Grenfell and Hunt
{Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. No. 664), represents Solon as in Ionia when
Peisistratus became tyrant (560 b.c). If this were so, the meeting with
Croesus would become chronologically possible.

58 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

are wrought upon, or woven into, some ancient
motify which is adapted to a historical setting.
The tale of the funeral pyre of Croesus sprang
from the burning of the Assyrian god Sandan ; it
was an up-to-date version of the legend of Sar-
danapalus. The story of the ring of Polycrates
turns on an old motive, the finding of something
lost in a fish's belly, but its point in connexion with
Polycrates has been explained only the other day.
The casting of the ring into the sea was symbolic
of thalassocracy ; it was the same mythical ring
as that of Minos, which in the poem of Bacchylides
Theseus sought in the halls of Amphitrite ; its
recovery was fatal to the ruler of the seas.^

Herodotus is the Homer of this later form of
historical myths, in which the supernatural
machinery consisted of oracles or significant
dreams or marvellous coincidences. They corre-
sponded to his wavering standard of the credible

>^4ip,nd probable, which generally excluded what
* seemed physically impossible. For instance, he

1 ^ positively refuses to believe that statues assumed

-^a sitting posture.^ He duly records the story that
a certain man dived under water a distance of

>..>^§everal miles. It was the privatp npinioy) of
-^Herodotus that that man fl-rrive^ '^^ « boatL.

* S. Reinach, " Xerxes et I'Hellespont," in the Revue arch6ologique, b€v.
4, vol. vi. pp. 1 sqq., 1905. The symbolic marriage of the Doges of Venice
with the Hadriatic is the same story, and Reinach also finds the same
tno^j/ underlying the story of Xerxes and the Hellespont (Herod, vii. 35)
and the rite practised by the Phocaeans, ib. i; 165, and by the lonians,
Aristotle. 'M. ir. 23.

" V. 86. 8 yiii. 8.

II HERODOTUS 59

Perhaps the story of the miraoiiloii.s fifiliveranrp.of
Delphi fi-om the Persians ^ may be taken to illustrate
the ill -defined limits of his faith. Their oracle
declared to the Delphian priests that the god would
himself provide for the safety of his sanctuary, and
when the Persians came they were repelled, with
great havoc, by lightning and by the fall of huge
boulders from Parnassus. Herodotus relates this
without any hint of scepticism, though he em-
phasizes the miraculous nature of the events. Now
you observe that there is nothing impossible in the
alleged physical occurrences ; the marvel lies in the
opportunity of the coincidence and the fulfilment
of the oracular announcement. Against a marvel
of this order Herodotus had no prejudice. But
another miracle was said to have happened on
the same occasion. Certain sacred arms, which
were preserved within the shrine and were too
sacred to be profaned by human touch, were
suddenly discovered lying in a heap in front of the
temple. A rationalist — Euripides, for instance —
would find no difficulty in such an occurrence,
assuming the fact to be certain. Herodotus
accepts it as a genuine marvel, without any
suggestion that human agency, notwithstanding
Delphic asseverations to the contrary, might have
been concerned in the matter ; and the notable
thing is that he considers it less wonderful than
the intervention of the physical forces which over-
whelmed the Persians. If such a phenomenon as

1 viii. 36-39.

/

60 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

the removal of the arms presented itself to us
for criticism — supposing the fact were assured
beyond a doubt, and supposing human agency
were absolutely excluded by the circumstances —
we should regard it as something incomparably
more extraordinary than the unquestionably wonder-
ful coincidence of the storm of lightning.^ H?rej
in fact, Herodotus has failed to draw the Ijp^ ^^
what is" physically impossible. The truth is that
, his faith and doubt are alike instinctiye : he had
never thought the problem out^for.hJTy*'^^^', ^f*
had never clearly defined_J;lie..bQrder-between- the
domains of the c]c£dible_and^ the incredible^_ And
so in this episode he has no sooner given us a
lesson in faith than he relapses into reserve. For
there was yet another marvel to be told. It was
said that two armed warriors of superhuman
stature pursued the flying Persians and dealt death
among their broken ranks. But Herodotus care-
fully avoids the responsibility of accepting this
story. He gives it on the authority of the
Persians ; he qualifies it by the phrase "as I
am informed " ; and he adds that the Delphians
identified the two warriors with local heroes.

The contrast of the naivete of Herodotus with
his scepticism imparl tohis epic~a very piqyuant
quality. Cred ulity alternates yith a cautious rer-
serve, jw^chis_especiallj_noticeable when he is

^ I do not add the fall of the rocks ; for this might have been engineered.
The rocks were shown to Herodotus in the temple of Athena Pronaia
(ch. 39) ; this was just the sort of evidence which would impress him.

1

II HERODOTUS 61

aware of more than, one version^of .an. occurrence.
He is an expert in the art of not committing
himself. He says in one passage, *' I ambQund
to state_what_is_jiaid»- hut T ani not boupj_-i2
believe."^ Of the tale that Zalmoxis lived for
three years in a subterranean chamber, he pro-
fesses agnosticism ; " I do not disbelieve nor do I
absolutely believe it."^ Occasionally he criticizes
and rejects a story, for instance the cb.arge against
the Alcmaeonids of treachery at Ma:*athon ; but^
his common practice is to state conflicting accounts
and leave the matter there. This method, as it
happens, is much more satisfactory to a modern
critic than if Herodotus had selected one version,
or had attempted to blend different versions to-
gether. But it shpws.him in th^ejight of acoUegtor
of historical material, -and an-accampli&hed artist jp

flrranmn^^nj^l'PfiPnting it^ rflthpr ihail_aS_whaLS£e

meaiiby_a hisionan, who^ eensiders~it his'-busiftess
to sift the^eyidence^ and decide, if possible, between
conflicting accounts.

We are often tempted to think of Herodotus as
an Ionian, although he was not a native of Ionia.
He wrote in Ionic ; and he cannot be severed from
the school of the Ionian historians, to whom his
work owed a great deal more than appears on the
surface. But if he had heard himself described
as an Ionian writer, he would have been vastly
indignant. He is at great pains to dissociate
himself from Ionia and Ionian interests. In his

I

» viL 152. - 2 iy_ 96^

,A

62 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

account of the Ionian revolt and of the part which
the lonians played in the war with Xerxes, he
shows a hardly veiled contempt for a people which,
as he says, had been thrice enslaved. He tells us
that the name " Ionian was one of no great repute."
He is careful to record, without any comment, the
Scythian opinion that the lonians were the most
cowardly and unmanly people in the world.^ He
takes frequent opportunities of criticizing adversely
the views of Ionian writers. Now I think we may
say that this antagonistic attitude was not due
entirely or principally to the fact that he belonged
by birth to Dorian Halicarnassus. He does indeed
insist on the difference of Dorian and Ionian, but the
contrast on which his anti-Ionian feeling depended
was one within the Ionian race itself — the distinction
of the Athenians from the lonians of Asia. We saw
that Herodotus was at Athens before he went to

/ Italy, and his connexion with Athens impressed its
mark on his political views. He was a warm

.w^dmirer of the Athenians, and looked with favour
and enthusiasm on their empire. He participated
in their experiment of colonising Thurii, became a
citizen of their daughter-city. But even if we had
not this external proof of his political sympathy,
his work testifies to it abundantly. The whole
account not only of the Marathonian campaign but
of the war with Xerxes is one that redounds to the
_glory of Athens and flatters Atheniaii.|)£ide>>~Jt is,
jn^fact, written mainly from the AthenianjiQiixt-of

1 iv. 142.

II HERODOTUS 63

view, and represents largely, though not exclusively,
tKe Athenian version. The Spartans and the part
they took in the war are often handled with irony
— for example, they were always arriving too
late because they were celebrating a feast. The
Corinthians are treated almost with malice. The
story would have had a very different complexion
if it had been written in the Spartan interest ; and
even though we have no philo-Spartan historian of
the time, a very good case has been made out for
the view that Sparta showed as true heroism as
Athens.^ Further, Herodotus takes opportunities
to set forth the mythistorical claims of Athens to
a hegemony of the Greeks, and represents Athens
as asserting those claims_at_tbe time ^ the Persian
war.^ This is^ an_anachronism. At that time
Sparta was admittedly the leader and dictator ;
Athens was a member of the Peloponnesian con-
federacy, and the strife for supremacy had not
begun. Thus the situation is construed in the
hght of the sequel ; history is distorted in the
interest of politics ; and the grounds of the cl^m
to hegemoiny which Herodotus ascribes to the
Athenians rf that time are the_^ock arguments
which we fiiid used in Athenian funeral oratiQiis.j0
illustrate, yjid_ju^tify_the_^A^e^ empirje.. In
the Epita ihios which Pericles pronounced over the
citizens J.illed in the Samian war (439 B.C.) these
argumer ts from myth and history were doubtless
marshalled ; and that Herodotus was present and

• By E. Meyer. 2 ^i X61 ; ix. 27.

I

64 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

listened to it is a conjecture of Eduard Meyer,
which has some plausibility, since we find that a
famous picturesque phrase used by the orator,
likening the dead soldiers to the spring taken out
of the year, was adopted by the historian and
placed in a new setting.^

Admiration for the Athenian empire in the
third quarter of the fifth century meant admiration
for Pericles, the chief inspirer of Athenian policy,
and the sympathy of Herodotus with Pericles is
revealed in the single passage in which he mentions
him, where he records the anecdote of his mother's
dream that a lion would be born to her.^ It is
revealed, too, in sympathy with the Alcmaeonid
family.^

^lis strong phil- Athenian feelings cannot Jbe
disconnected froni_hi§„tojie of pi:^idice arjd[_(jis-
garagement in treating the lonians. When the
immediate danger of Persian subjection was over,
and the Ionian cities which had been leagued with
Athens as an equal were brought to submit to
her as a mistress, there was little love lost. The
Ionian record of the war was one which woul^
have failed to satisfy Athenian patriots as certainly

* vii, 162. 2 yi 121

^ V. 71 rests on the Alcmaeonid tradition. It has l .^en suggested
that this sympathy of Herodotus may explain his curiom treatment of
Themistocles. To this statesman Athens chiefly owed th» decisive role
she played in the war, and though his good counsels are recc -^nised, he is
also treated in an unfriendly spirit of detraction, and repret 'nted as an
intriguer rather than as a statesman. This looks as if the memory of
Themistocles were under a cloud, and this partial obscuiation were
reflected in lierodotus. Afterwards, Thucydides made a poik't of doing
him justice.

n

HERODOTUS 65

as the Herodotean narrative must have failed to
please the lonians. Herodotus expressly argued
that the Athenians were "truly the saviours of
Greece " ; ^ but he did more : he gave currency and
authority to a story which embodied Athenian
tradition and justified Athenian empire, and with
such cunning and tact that it has been permanently '
effective. His admiration for Athens was bound
up witlji his belief in democratic freedom. Until
the Peisistratids were overthrown, he says, Athens
was an ordinary undistinguished city ; but when
the Athenians abolished the tyranny and won their
freedom, they became by far the first state in
Greece.^

Herodotus then was a phil- Athenian democrat.
If the story is true that the Athenians bestowed
on him ten talents (about 12,000 dollars) in recog-
nition of the merits of his work, it was a small
remuneration for the service he rendered to the
renown of their city.^ But that he did this service
does not degrade his work into anything that
could be described as a partisan publication in the
offensive sense. It was pragmatical ; it reflected^
the author's political beliefs, andexhibited a strong
bias in the preference^ gjyenjto^Athema^
But it was the work of a historian who cannot help
being partial ; it was not the work of a partisan
who becomes a historian for the sake of his cause.

^ vii. 139. ' fULKp^ irpGnoi, v. 78.

* Plutarch, Tlepl r^s 'HpoSfrrou KaK(yqBela%, 26. There is nothing incred-
ible in the story that he recited part of his work at Athens c. 445 b.c.
His work then consisted of the last three Books.

,y

66 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Something more particular must be said about
the Herodotean story of the Persian invasion. A
self- flattering version of the war had become a
tradition at Athens. We have an early sketch of
it, in a poetical form, in the Persae of Aeschylus
(472 B.C.) ; but Herodotus was probably the first
to write it down in a historical form, some twenty
years later. Oral traditions (gathered at Athens,
Sparta, Delphi, and elsewhere) appear profusely in
his work, as every one knows. But he could not
have constructed his history of the course of the
war from oral traditions alone, or composed such
a narrative of events, in which he was too young
to take part, thirty years or so afterwards, without
the help of some earlier record. We have seen
that he depended on Hecataeus for E^y^i» though
this was just one of the portions of his work where
autopsy, and information collected orally, might
have sufficed. Thereis little doubt that Hecataeus
was his main guide for early orientaL history, and
that the same writer was also used for the descrip-
tions of Scythia and Libya, along with other
geographical works of the Ionian school. When
we come to the invasion of Darius and Xerxes, we
find, as we might expect, clear indications that
Herodotus here too had a written guide. Through-
out the narrative, in the last three Books, of the
events after INIarathon to the end of the second i
invasion, the historian has naturally to pass back-
wards and forwards from the Persians to the
Greeks. Now there is a remarkable contrast

n HERODOTUS 67

between the character of the narrative when the
writer takes us to Susa or to the Persian camp,
and when he transports us to the cities or tents of
the Greeks. In the accounts of what the Greeks
did, we are constantly confronted with more than
one story, representing various oral traditions which
reflect different local interests. But when we
follow the movements of the Persians, we have a
continuous chronological narrative, bynojnoeans
always credible, but all of a piece and marked by
enumerations and details which point to a more_pr
less contemporary written source^ jand__a_&Qurce.j3f
which Persian, not Greek, history was formallyjbhe
subject.^ This source contributes the main thread
of the narrative, round which Herodotus has
wrought all the additional supplementary and
illustrative material he managed to collect. The
chronology of Persian events after Marathon is
orderly and distinct, contrasting with the un-
certainties which beset the digressions on Greek
history, such as that on the Spartan kings
Cleomenes and Demaratus. Now we know of a
history of the Persian war prior to Herodotus,
the book of Dionysius of Miletus. I spoke of
it in the last lecture, and I also pointed out
that the Persian history of Charon of Lamp-
sacus may, not improbably, have come down
to the invasion of Xerxes. Either of these
books would satisfy the condition that the
war was treated as an episode in Persian,
not Greek, history, so that it is not unlikely

68 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

that one of these may have been the source of
Herodotus.^
. Into the warp thus furnished by an older writer
is wrought a woof of Athenian tradition, varied
here and there by tissue from other sources. And
it is noteworthy how in the last three Booksjjcom-
prising the invasion of^Xerxes, the imminenceL_Df
a divine diiection of hmnan affairs is strongly
accentuated. The sceptical tone is less apparent
here than in other parts of the work. From the
beginning of the seventh Book the dominant note
is changed, at least this is the impression I receive ;
the atmosphere becomes charged with a certain
solemnity ; it is, I think we might say, rather
Athenian than Ionian. Is this difference due
to the influence of those Athenian dramas which
had glorified the subject, the tragedies of Phry-
nichus and Aeschylus ?

The catastrophe which befals the Persian ex-
pedition is not conceived as the work of jealous
gods annoyed by the conspicuous wealth or success
of mere mortals. It is rather a divine punishment
pOheJnsQlence_and-rasEnes^^
presperity. This is the Aeschylean doctrine :

Zevs Toi KokaxTTris twv VTrcpKOfjLTruiv ayav
<j)pov7]iJ,aT(i}v €ire(TTiv ev6vvos /Sapvs.^

^ So Lehmann-Haupt. There is little evidence for a source of this
kind in the history of the years 500-490 b.c. = Books v. vi. Chronology
is conspicuously absent, but the few dates we get suggest a Persian
history as their source (Charon or Dionysius ?). See vi. 18, 42 ad init. , 43
ad init. , 46 ad init.

2 Persae 897. In Agam. 749, Aeschylus rejects the vulgar doctrine
(iraXaf0oTos iv /Sporoty yipwv \6yos) that wealth, inordinately increased,
necessarily leads to unappeasable woe.

II HERODOTUS 69

Zeus is a judge who visits heavily

All whose self-glorious spirit vaults too high.

This Athenian influence in the last Books of
Herodotus accords with my conjecture that Athens
was his headquarters during a part of the ten years
or so which elapsed between his banishment and
his sailing for Italy.

Herodotus then made a considerable use of
older writers ^ — of whom he only names Hecataeus,
and usually for the purpose of hinting something
uncomplimentary. As the works of these \adters
have perished, it is very difficult^to- form-a.. £air
estimate of theachieyements of Herodotus hiinsglf ;
as a historicaliTiyesti^ator---j^)art froyn his traQS-
cendent gifts as an artist and man of l^ttfir!^ His
great service consisted probably in the collection
of unwritten material concerning modern Greek
history ; this floating matter he wrought with
masterly skill into a framework of facts constructed
by predecessors. His maxims of historical criticism
may be set down as three : (1) Suspect superhuman
and miraculous occurreiices, which contradict
ordinary experience. But this, in his application

^ A complete library of Greek prose works on history would have
been very small in 450 b.c, and it would not have been very much larger
in 430 B.C. It is difficult to suppose that Herodotus would not have been
acquainted with all the historical literature that had been published, or
that the works of Dionysius and Charon could have escaped him. Besides
Hecataeus the only historian to whom he refers is Scylax (iv. 44), but
he mentions him as an explorer and not as an author, though obviously
his brief account of the exploration is taken from the report of Scylax.
Could he have failed to know the book of this Carian writer on Heracleides
of Mylasa? It is remarkable that he ignores the part played by
Heracleides of Artemisium (see Sosylus fragment, mentioned above, p. 25).
Heracleides is mentioned v. 121. The geographical works of the lonians
are referred to in iv. 36.

L

70 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

of it, leaves a wide room for portents, and it does
not cover oracles and dreams. (2) When you are
confronted by conflicting evidence or differing
versions of the same event. I^eep an open mind ;
audi alteram partem. But this does not save him
from a biassed acceptanf^p of Athpnian traditi^^p
(3) Autopsy and first jhaad-QiaL ^information are
suj)erior to stories_at second hand, whether written
or oraL^ This tends to take the naive ^rinr'" I
know, for I was there myself,*' and it placed the
historian at the mercy of the vergers and guides in
Egyptian temples.

I may illustrate by a couple of examples how
Herodotus was sometimes unfortunate in his in-
formation gathered on the spot. When he visited
Egypt he saw on the great Pyramid inscriptions
which disappeared in the Middle Ages. Probably
they were of religious import, appropriate to a
royal tomb. But Herodotus tells us that they
enumerated the sums of money which were ex-
pended on the onions and leeks consumed by the
workmen who built the pyramid. This was the
interpretation with which the guide satisfied the
Greek traveller's curiosity.^ The other instance

^ Compare, e.g., ii. 99. I have little doubt that Herodotus visited and
examined the battlefield of Plataea. Our diflBculties in reconstructing
the battle (elucidated by Grundy, Woodhouse, and Macan) from his
description are not an objection. We may remember that the account of
the battle of Trasimene by Polybius, who had visited the place and was
a master of military science, lends itself to diflFerent interpretations.
The features of the Pass of Thermopylae as described by Herodotus
can be recognised by any traveller to-day ; but he can hardly have been
there, for he orients it N.S. instead of E.W.

* See Wiedemann, ad Her. ii. 125.

n HERODOTUS 71

I will quote appertains to Babylonian history.
Herodotus saw at Babylon the great buildings of a
king, with whose name even those of us who have
not studied Babylonian annals are probably familiar
— King Nebuchadnezzar. He is correctly informed
as to the time at which they were built — five genera-
tions after the reign of Queen Sammuramat whom
he calls Semiramis. But autopsy did not keep him
from falling into a droll error about the potentate
who built them. Nebuchadnezzar has had rather
bad luck. In the book of Daniel he is meta-
morphosed into a beast of the field ; in Herodotus
he is forced to masquerade as a woman. We have
to discover his identity under the mask of Queen
Nitocris.^

We must give full credit to Herodotus for
having recognised the principles of criticism which
I have indicated, though his application of them is
unsatisfactory and sporadic. They are maxims of
permanent validity ; properly qualified they lie at
the basis of the modern developments of what
is called historical methodology. But notwith-
standing the profession of these axioms of common
sense, he was in certain way§ so lacking in
common sense that parts of his work might seem
to have been written by a precocious child._ He
undertook to write the history of a great war ; but .
he did not possess the most elementary knowledge
of the conditions of warfare. His fantastic state-

^ This has been shown by Lehmann-Haupt in his paper on Semiramis
(see Bibliography). Herodotus is similarly unlucky about Mithra. He
makes him a goddess, i. 131.

72 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

ment of the impossible numbers of the army of
Xerxes exhibits an incompetence which is almost
incredible and is alone enough to stamp Herodotus
as more of an epic poet than a historian. It
matters not whether he worked out the arithmetic
for himself or accepted it entirely on authority;
- this is a case in which to accept is as heinous as to
invent. Heinous for a historian ; and if we judge
Herodotus by the lowest standard as a historian of
a war, this case invalidates his claim to competence.
But as an epic story-teller he escapes triumphantly.
His catalogue of the Persian host is a counterpart
to the Catalogue of the Iliad:

fivdov 8' d)s or dotSos iirixTTafievtos KOTcXc^as.

His incompetence in military matters is shown, in
another way, in his account of the campaijyn_-Qf
Thermopylae and Artemisium. The key to their
actions lay — and it required no technical training
or experience to discern this — in the close con-
nexion and interdependence of the Persian land
army and the Persian fleet, a fact which governed
the Greek measures for defence. Herodotus,
though he mentions several things which imply
this and enable us more or less to penetrate the
strategy of the combatants, fails completely to
realise the situation and treats the naval and the
land operations as if they were independent.

In his relation of the Persian war, Herodotus
does not neglect the chronology, and it is perhaps
as satisfactory as we could expect. But it may

II HERODOTUS 73

fairly be questioned whether the credit for this is
not to be imputed to an earlier writer — Dionysius
or Charon — whom he had the discretion to follow.
It is significant that he does not give any formal (%.")
date which a Greek reader could easily interpret,
until he mentions, almost by the way, that the
Persian invasion of Attica occurred in the archon-
ship of Calliades.^ But while chronology fares
pretty well in the last three Books, the whole work
shows that, while the author copied the dates which /, >v
his sources supplied, h^ never attempted to_ grapple
with the chronological difficulties of Greek history,
although so many of' the episodes which he related
raised the problem of synchronizing Hellenic tradi-
tion with oriental records. We have no reason to
suppose that he avoided the problem because he
judged it insoluble ; his indifference to it is another
manifestation of his epic, quasi-historical mind.

The first phase of Greek historiography culmi-
nates and achieves its glory in Herodotus. He
reflects its features — its eager research into geo-
graphy and ethnography (the indispensable ground-
work of history), and its predominant interest in
the East. He adopts from Hecataeus a critical
attitude towards the ancient myths, aided by a
rudimentary comparative mythology. But these

^ He signalises the years 490-481 by reference to the year of Marathon,
but he does not mention the eponymous archon of that year. Even if he
had done so a reader would have required a list of Attic archons, in order
to follow his dates intelligently. Herodotus does not assist his readers
by reckoning back from a fixed point which they could realise. Thucydides I'f
saw that without such a point dates were entirely in the air, and he dated • '
backward from the first year of the Peloponnesian war.

74 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.ii

elements are transfigured by the magic of his epic
art and the spell of a higher historical idea. He
was the Homer of the Persian war, and that war
originally inspired him. His work presents a
picture of sixth - century civilisation ; and it is
also a universal history in so far as it gathers the
greater part of the known world into a narrative
which is concentrated upon a single issue. It is
fortunate for literature that he was not too critical ;
if his criticism had been more penetrating and less
naive, he could not have been a second Homer. He
belonged entirely in temper and mentality to the
period before the sophistic illumination, which he
lived to see but not to understand. Before his
death, the first truly critical historian of the world
had begun to compose. Our attention will next
be claimed by Thucydides.

LECTURE III

THUCYDIDES

§ 1. His life and the growth of his work

Thucydides belonged by descent to the princely
family of Thrace into which Miltiades, the hero
of Marathon, had married. He was thus a cousin
of the statesman Cimon, and he inherited a rich
estate with gold mines in Thrace. And so, while
he was an Athenian citizen and connected with a
distinguished family of Athens, he had an inde-
pendent pied a terre in a foreign country. His
mind was moulded under the influence of that
intellectual revolution wHich we associate with
the comprehensive name of the Sophists, the
illumination which was flooding the^^ducatecl
w^jd of Hellas with the radiance of reason.
Without accepting the positive doctrines of any
particular teacher, he learned the greatest lesson
of these thinkers : Mie learned to consider and
crTijpi^g__fe.ntSi "^P^f\)"dif^pd^ J}y anthority apd
traditkmTi He came to be at home in the
"modern" way of thinking, which analysed
politics and ethics, and applied logic to every-

75

76 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

thing in the world. We might illustrate how
intense and deep -reaching the sophistic move-,
ment was, in the third quarter of the fifth century,
by pointing to the difference between Herodotus
and Thucydides. If you took up the two works
without knowing the dates of their composition,
you would think there might be a hundred years'
development between them. But then consider
the difference between Sophocles and Euripides.

Thucydides must have been at least twenty-five
years old, some think he was as much as forty,
when the Peloponnesian war broke out in 431
B.C. At the very beginning he formed the
resolution/ to record it, and in the first years of
the war, at least, the composition of the history
was nearly contemporary with the events. In
424 B.C. he was elected to the high office of a
strategos and appointed to command in Thrace ;
and the loss of Amphipolis led to his condemna-
tion and banishment. For twenty years he did
not see Athens, and, while he probably lived for
the most part on his Thracian estate, he also
travelled to collect material for his work. It
seems certain that he visited Sicily, for his
narrative of the Athenian expedition could not
have been written by one who had not seen
Syracuse with his own eyes.^ After the end of
the war he was allowed to return to Athens in
404 B.C. (by the decree of Oenobius). He did not

^ That he knew Sparta is a legitimate inference from i. 10. 2, and
134.4.

Ill THUCYDIDES 77

die before 399 B.C. ; perhaps he was no longer
alive in 396 B.C. ; and he left his book unfinished.^

It is evident how these biographical facts, and
they are almost all we know about the man, bear
upon his historical work. (^Hi^foinny^^
at Athens provided him, perhaBSjjwith.exceTltional
facilities for obtaining authentic information, while
hismilitary training_and^ experience qualified hjm
to be the historian of a war. His second home in
Thrace gave him an interest independent of
Athens, and helped him to regard the Athenian
empire with a certain detachment which would
have been less easy for one who was a pure-
blooded citizen and had no home outside Attica.
His banishment operated in the same direction,
and afforded him opportunities for intercourse
,with the antagonists of his country. The in-
tellectual movement which invaded Athens when
he was a young man was a condition of his mental
growth ; if he had belonged to an earlier gfenera-
tion, he could not have been Thucydides.

But if all these circumstances helped and con-
ditioned the achievements of a profoundly original
mind, which always thought for itself, we must
seek the stimulus which aroused the historical
faculty of Thucydides in — the Athenian empire.
If it was the wonder of the Greek repulse of the
Persian hosts that inspired the epic spirit of

^ There were conflicting stories as to the manner and the place of his
death. His tomb, which may have been a cenotaph, was shown at
Athens, in the burying-place of the family of his kinsman Cimon, near
the Melitid gate.

78 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Herodotus, it was the phenomenon of the Empire
of Athens, a new thing in the history of Hellas, —
an empire governed by a democracy, a new thing
in the history of the world — that captured the
cooler but intense interest of Thucydides. He
! did not take up his pen to celebrate ; his aim wgs
' to understand. — to observe critically how that
empire behaved in the struggle which was to test_^

its powers^; It has not, I think, been sufficiently

realised what an original stroke of genius it was
to form the idea of recording the history of the
war at the very moment of its outbreak. Con-
temporary history in the strictest meaning of the
term was thus initiated. Thucydides watched
the events for the purpose of recording them ;
he collected the material while it was fresh from
the making. Fprth^_he-d^^igTiH r history whifih
should be simply a history^f the war and of the
relations of the militentL._states^wJbidh,skQuld_c^^
fjne itself to its_theme, and not deviate into
geography oranthropologyjQr.-0±liex- things. Thus
he was the founder of "polMcaL" histgiy in the
special sense in which we are accustomed to use
the termj

Widely divergent views are held as to the way
in which the work of Thucydides was constructed
and the stages by which it reached its final though
incomplete state. This question is not one of
merely meritorious curiosity which may be left
to the commentator as his exclusive concern ; it
affects our general conception of the historian's

Ill THUCYDIDES 79

point of view, as well as his art, and no study of
Thucydides can evade it.

The history falls into two parts. The first endsl
with the Fifty Years Peace of 421 B.C., which atj
the time seemed to conclude the war and terminate \
the author's task. The second part is formally I ^
introduced by a personal explanation, in which 1
Thucydides announces the continuation of his
subject down to the capture of Athens in 404 b.c.
He explains that though we may divide the whole
period 431-404 B.C. into three parts — the first war
of ten years, then seven years of hollow truce, and
then a second war, — the truer view is that there
was only one war lasting twenty-seven years, for
the hollow truce was truly nothing less than war.
This passage was written after 404 b.c. and natur-
ally suggests that Thucydides had only recently
recognised that the indecisive war which he had
recorded was only a portion of a greater and
decisive war, and had determined to extend the
compass of his work to the whole twenty-seven
years. On the other hand, his statements^ seem
to make it evident that during his banishment he
had followed the course of events and travelled
with a view to continuing his work^ This con-
tinuation was prompted by the Athenian expedi-
tion to Sicily, and was intended to be the history
of what then seemed to him a second war. I
conclude then that there were three stages in his
plan. After the Fifty Years' Peace of 421 b.c.,

1 V. 26.

80 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

his book was to be simply a history of the war
of ten years. The course of the Sicilian expedi-
tion began a new war which he determined also
to record, as a chronologically separate episode.
Then the catastrophe of 404 b.c. set in a new
light the significance of all that had happened
since the original outbreak of hostilities in 431 B.C.,
and imparted to the whole series of events a unity
of meaning which they would hardly have acquired
if the struggle had been terminated in 404 B.C. not
by the fall of Athens but by a second edition of
the Fifty Years' Peace. Hence Thucydides rose

to thejgrger yo^cf^ptl"^ "f prndnping a bitrtnrjr nf^
thejvhple period of t.wenty-sevf n years.

Accordingly he found on his return to Athens
that he had three things to do. He had to
compose the history of the ambiguous interval
between the Fifty Years' Peace and the Sicilian
war. Secondly, he had to work up the rough
copy and material of the last ten years. This was
done^ fully and triumphantly for the Sicilian
episode, but of the rest we only possess the un-
revised draft of the years 412 and 411, known as
Book VIII., for which, perhaps in respect to its
literary shape, and certainly in respect to its
matter (by means of supplementary information
procurable at Athens), much had to be done.
In the third place, it was desirable and even I
necessary to make some additions and alterations!
in the original, completed but still unpublished, I

^ Perhaps before his return.

Ill THUCYDIDES 81

history of the first ten years, so as to bring it
internally as well as externally into the light of the
higher unity. This was a natural thought, and it
appears to me the only hypothesis that explains
the facts without constraint/

§ 2. His principles of historiography : accuracy
and relevance

In his Introduction Thucydides announces, a
pew conception of historical writings He sets up
a new standard of truth or accurate reproduction
of facts, and a new ideal of historical research ;
judged by which, he finds Herodotus and the
Ionian historians wanting. He condemns them
expressly for aiming at providing "good read-
ing," as we should say, rather than facts, and
for narrating stories, the truth of which cannot
possibly be tested. He_dbesjio1L^s.eekJumielf_io
fumish^ntertainment or to win a popular .success,
but to construct a record which shall be per-
qianeptly valuable ^ because it is true. He warns
his readers that they will find nothing mythical
in his work. He saw, as we see, that the
mythical element pervaded Herodotus (of whom,
evidently, he was chiefly thinking) no less than
Homer. His own experience in ascertaining
contemporary facts taught him, as nothing else
could do, how soon and how easily events are

^ See Appendix.

2 Instructive. I revert to this important point in Lecture VIII.

G

y

82 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS leot.

wont to pass into the borders of myth ; he learned
thereby the most effective lesson of scepticism in
regard to historical tradition. It was indeed of
inestimable importance for the future of history
that Thucydides conceived the new idea of re-
cording the war at its commencement. It made
all the difference to his work that he formed the
resolve in 431 b.c. and not after the war was over.
Writing the history of the present is always a
very different thing from writing the history of
the distant past. The history of the distant past
depends entirely on literary and documentary
sources ; the history of the present always involves
unwritten material as well as documents. But the
difference was much greater in the days of
Thucydides than it is now. To-day a writer
sitting down to compose a history of his own
time would depend mainly on written material,
5^,^**^ • — on official reports, official documents of various
^ kinds, and on the daily press. He would supple-

\n«^^ ' ment this, so far as he could, by information
vjA-^ w>*^ derived personally from men of affairs, or by his
own experience if he had witnessed or taken part
in public events ; but the main body of his work
would depend on written sources. The ancient
historian, on the contrary, in consequence of the
comparative paucity of official reports and the
absence of our modern organization for collecting
and circulating news, would have to be his own
journalist and do all the labour of obtaining
facts orally from the most likely sources ; and

Ill THUCYDIDES 83

his success might largely depend on accidental
facilities. His work would rest, mainly on in-
formation obtained orally by his own inquiries,
supplemented by such documents as were avail-
able, such as the texts of treaties or official
instructions or letters ; whereas the modem work
is based principally on printed or written informa-
tion, supplemented by such private information as
may be accessible. It is clear that the ancient
conditions made the historian's task more difficult,
and demanded from him greater energy and
initiative. Few things would be more interesting
han a literary diary of Thucydides, telling of his
interviews with his informants and showing his
ways of collecting and sifting his material. But
it was part of his artistic method to cover up all
the traces of his procedure, in his finished narrative.
He had to compare and criticize the various
accounts he received of each transaction ; but his
literary art required that he should present the
final conclusions of his research without indicating
divergences of evidence. It is probable that he
suppressed entirely details about which he could
not satisfy himself. He was very chary of
mentioning reports or allegations concerning which
he felt in doubt ; in the few cases in which he

disclaims certainty we may suppose that he
accepted the statement as probable.^ He does
not name his informants ; nor does he even tell

• ^ For instance : of the answer of the oracle to the Spartans (wy
X^erat), i. 118. 3 ; of the motives of Archidamus, ii. 18. 5 ; of the end of
Nicias, vii. 86.

84 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

e

us on what occasions he was himself an eye-witness
of what he describes. We may make guesses,
but we can only speak with assurance of the
operations which he conducted as strategos. \

We are able, however, to gain a slight glimpse
into the historian's workshop because some parts
of his work have been 'left incomplete. The
eighth Book is only a preliminary draft. In it
we find accounts emanating from different inform-
ants, Athenian and Peloponnesian, written out so
as to form a continuous narrative, yet containing
contradictions as to matters of fact as well as differ-
ences in tendency.^ It is possible, for instance, to
detect that i5ome of the Peloponnesian informants
were favourable to Astyochus the Lacedaemonian
commander, and others were not It is evident
that we have material which has only been pro-
visionally sifted. Again, the texts of the three
successive treaties of alliance between Persia and
Sparta are given verbatim,'^ and if we consider the
transitory significance of the first two, it seems
improbable that Thucydides intended to reproduce
them hi eoctenso in his final draft. They were
material — material, according to a plausible con-
jecture, furnished by Alcibiades. These facts, and
the unsatisfactory nature of the account of the
oligarchic revolution, as compared with the finished
portions of the work, confirm what the style and
the absence of speeches had long ago suggested.

^ See Holzapfers article mentioned in the Bibliography.
2 viii. 18, 3T, 58.

Ill THUCYDIDES 85

that Book viii. was a first draft which, if the
writer had lived, would have appeared in a very
different shape.

In the fifth Book it may also be shown that
there was still revision to be done, though this
section was in a more advanced state than Book
VIII. Here we find a whole series of documentary
texts. Now it was not in accordance with the
artistic method of Thucydides, or of ancient his-
torians in general, to introduce into the narrative
matter heterogeneous in style ; and it is almost
incredible that he would have admitted texts not
written in Attic Greek. We must, I think, con-
clude that we have here material which was to be
wrought in during a final revision.

In the finished part of the history we can some-
times penetrate to the source of information. It
is easy to see that he consultedPlatagans as to the
siege of Plataea, and that he received information
iroin^ Spartans_j.s well as from Athenians about
the episode of Pylos and Sphacteria. We can
sometimes divine that he has derived his state-
ments from the official instructions given to mjlijary
commandei^j^ and it has been acutely shown that
his enumeration of the allies of the two opposing
powers at the beginning of the war was based on
the instrument of the Thirty Years' Peace. ^ Some-
times the formulae of decrees or treaties peer
through the Thucydidean summary.^

^ By Wilamowitz-Mollendorff.

- Cp. ii. 24 ; iv. 16. Wilamowitz-MdllendorfF, JDie Thukydides-legends
(see Bibliography).

iJk'

u

Y^

86 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

I VWe have then to take the finished product,
Which Thucydides furnishes, on trust. We have
not any considerable body of independent evidence
for testing his accuracy, but so far as we can test
it by the chance testimonies of original documents,
he comes out triumphantly (in those parts which
he completed), and there can be no question that
the stress which he laid on accuracy was not a
phrase.^ The serious criticisms which can be
brought against him in regard to fi^ffts nnncam
not what he states but what he omits to state.
For instance, the important measure which Athens
adopted in 424 b.c. of raising the tribute of the
subject states is passed over entirely, though it is
a pertinent fact in the story of the war ; we have
learned it in recent years by the discovery of parts
of the stone decree. We cannot discern his reasons
) for recounting some passages of military history at
great length and passing over others (such as the

^ Some errors are due not to the author but to very early scribes. For
instance, Andocides in i. 51, Methone for Methana in iv. 45 (cp. Wilar
mowita-Mollendorff, op. cit.). It is imquestionable that he makes grave
topographical mistakes in his account of the episode of Pylos-Sphacteria.
He has completely misconceived the size of the entrances to the bay, and
he gives the length of Sphacteria as 15 stades, whereas it is really 24.
These errors have led Grundy to deny that Thucydides had ever visited
the spot ; while R. M. Burrows (who has shown that the whole narrative
is otherwise in accordance with the topography) thinks that his measure-
ments were wrong. My view is that he first wrote the story from infor-
mation supplied by eye-witnesses who gave him a general, though partly
inaccurate, idea of the place, and that he afterwards tested it on the spot
and probably added local touches, but omitted to revise the errors of
distance. We have a somewhat similar case in the description of New Car-
thage by Poly bins (see below, p. 194). It is indeed possible that the blunder
in the length of the island may have been exaggerated by a scribe's pen.
For K was exposed to confusion with (ts or) le. — The topography of the
siege of Plataea has been elucidated by Grundy.

Ill THUCYDIDES 87

attempt of Pericles on Epidaurus) with a bare
mention. But in other cases his silence is a judg- ,^
ment. He rejects, for instance, by ignoring, the
connexion which the gossip of the Athenian
streets alleged between the private life of Pericles
and the origin of the war. But it must be allowed
in general that, in omitting, Thucydides displays a
boldness and masterfulness on which no modern -^
historian would venture.^ ^^TCaJju.^

His omissions are closely connected with a X

general feature of his work. If the first funda- ^

mental principle of his ideal of history was
accuracy, the second was relevance ; and both o^*^^-^"^
signify his rebound from Herodotus. Discursive- yuAe^o^L
ness as we saw was the very life-breath of the
epic history of Herodotus ; the comprehensiveness
of the Ionian idea of history enabled him to spread
about through a wide range, to string on tale to
tale, to pile digression on digression, artfully, yet
as loosely as the structure of his Ionic prose.
Thucydides conceived the notion of political
history, and he laid down for himself a~striCt
pTfirciple of exclusion. His subject is the war^^
and he will not take advantage _.Q£,Qpporti^"it^f<;
to digress into the history of culture. He ex-
cludes geography, so far as brief notices are not
immediately necessary for the explanation of the

' Thus no modern historian, probably, would have omitted to note the
psephisma of Charinus, which followed up the decrees excluding Megara
from the markets of Athens and her empire, by excluding Megarians
on penalty of death from the very soil of Attica. Thucydides would have
said that it did not affect the outbreak of the war.

88 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

events recorded. He disdains personal gossip and
anecdotes ; he had no use for the spicy memoirs of
Ion and Stesimbrotus. He rigidly abstains from
dropping any information about the private life of
4>) Pericles, Cleon, or any other politician ; and the
exception which he makes in the case of Alcibiades
only serves to show the reason for the rule ; because
those sides of the life of Alcibiades which Thucy-
dides notices had, in his view, distinct political
consequences in determining the attitude of the
Athenians towards him. Further, he jsxcludes the
internal history of the states with whose political
"1 ) intgr-relations he is concerned, except when the
internal aiFected directly, or was bound up with,
the external, as in the case of the plague and of
the domestic seditions. He does not give any
information about the political parties at Athens,
, g^j though some of his statements imply their exist-
ence, till he comes to the oligarchical revolution.
His outlook, as Wilamowitz has observed, is not
bounded by the Pnyx, but by the Empire.
^^^7 There are, of course, digressions in Thucydides,
'I but with hardly an exception they are either

<^^^ closelv relevant or introduced for some special

^^<^ ' purposi^

The history of the growth of the Athenian
empire is in form an excursus; but we might
i) fairly say that it properly belongs to the pro-
legomena ; it is distinctly relevant to the subject
of the book, and had the special purpose of supple-
menting and correcting Hellanicus. The digression

in THUCYDIDES 89

on the fortunes of Pausanias is also a relevant, z.]
though certainly not necessary, explanation of the
Athenian demand that the Lacedaemonians should
expel a pollution ; but the account, which follows,
of the later career of Themistocles_ is wholly
unconnected with the Peloponnesian war. I
will however show hereafter that the author
had a special motive in introducing it. The
valuable chapter on early Athens, with its archaeo-
logical evidence,^ is strictly to the point, for its ^
purpose is to illustrate the historian's acute remark
that the distress of the country people at coming
to live in the city was due to habits derived from
the early history of Attica. A sketch of the early
history of Sicily was almost indispensable for the
elucidation of the narrative ; a knowledge of the v^ )
island and its cities could not be taken for granted
in the Athenian public. The description of the
Odrysean kingdom of Sitalces^ was unquestionably
due to the author's personal interest in Thrace ; - \
but it had the object of suggesting a contrast
between the power and resources of Thrace and
Scythia with those of the Greek states.

Xhe story of the fall of the Athenian tyrants ^^-^^^*^ ^

(in Book vi.), which is an excursus in the true c*-wc^ ^,

^'^»i ■ ■ ■ ■■" ' ■ ■- 1

sense of the word, was introduced to correct popular -"v^^w^^v*^
errors. The other passage in which Thucydides \
seems for a moment non - Thucydidean is where \
he sketches the history of the fair of Delos, quotes "^

^ A part of it would naturally have appeared in a footnote, had foot-
notes been then in use.
2 u. 96-7; cp. ii. 29.

90 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

from a Homeric hymn, and deviates into the
history of culture. I cannot help suspecting that
here too he is correcting some current misappre-
hension. If he may legitimately be criticized for
turning aside from his subject to correct errors
which may seem trivial enough, and if he is some-
times reprimanded for having elsewhere captiously
noted a couple of small blunders in Herodotus, it
must be remembered t^f^t \X waSf of impnrtanpp
to illustrate his doctrine that tradition cannot he
I taken on trust, and that the facile methods of
current historiography inevitably^led to inaccuracy.
The^digressions then in Thucydides which can

frpm the digressions_aiid_ ajnplitud^
The critic Dionysius considered it a point of
inferiority in Thucydides, as compared with Hero-
dotus, that he pursued his subject steadily and
kept to his argument, without pausing by the way
and providing his readers with variety ; and he
supposed that in ** the two or three places " where
the historian did digress, his motive was to relieve
the narrative by a pleasant pause. The criticism
would have been more elucidating if Dionysius had
pointed out that/while Herodotus wasjnfluencedjbx.
the epic, the artistic method of Thucydides must
r/tther be compared with thatpf the drama. Thucy-
dides adheres as closely to his argument as a tragic
poet, and such variety as was secured in tragedyj
by the interjection of choral odes, he obtains by th(
speeches which he intersperses in the narrative

[th.

Ill

THUCYDIDES 91

His first consideration was accuracy ; he had to
follow^ events and not to mould them into corlre-
spondence with an artistic plan, and his strict chrjoijQ^
logical order excluded devices of arran^rQentX.j3ut
occasionally we can detect deliberate management
for the sake of a calculated effect. It may be
pointed out that the long section on the origin and
growth of the Athenian empire, placed where it
is, between the two Assemblies at Sparta, has the
effect of interrupting a series of speeches which
coming together would have been excessively long.
Again, it has been well shown by Wilamowitz-
MoUendorff how the delays of Archidamus, in the
first invasion of Attica, in the hope that Athens
might give in at the last moment, are reflected in
the form of the narrative, which is arranged to
produce the impression of a slow and halting
march ; and the archaeological deviation into the
early history of Athens has the value of assisting
in this artistic effect.

/C

§ 3. Modern criticisms on his competence

/In common with other ancient historians,
Thucydides may be taken to task for not having
recognised the part played in human affairs by
economic facts and commerciaLJiiterests. That he
was not blind to economic conditions is shown by
the leading significance he attributes to want of
material resources in the early Greek communities ;
and he fully realises the importance of finance.
But it may be said that he should have furnished a

V

92 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

detailed explanation and analysis of the commercial
basis on which the Athenian power rested, and of
the mercantile interests of other states which were
affected and endangered by her empire. _It |s
however pnlyjn quite recent times that economical

and commercial factors in historical develop-

ment have begun to receive their due, and,
perhaps it may be said^ra-tb^T-JHorfi than tkeir
^iifr. They have come so much to the front that
some writers are tempted to explain all historical
phenomena by economic causes. This illustrates
how the tendencies of the present react upon our
conceptions of the past. These factors, of such
immense importance in the present age, certainly
did not play anything like the same part in the
ancient world, and if the ancient historians con-
siderably underrated them, we may easily fall into
the error of overrating them. We may be sure
that the interests of Athens presented themselves
to statesmen, as to Thucydides, primarily under the
political, and not the economical, point of view.
I Thucydides^^eated political history ; economic
' history is a discovery of the nineteenth century.

Perhaps the gravest accusation which has been
brought against the competency of Thucydides is
that he misunderstood, if he did not intentionally
misrepresefil7 the^causes of the Peloponnesian war.
The charge has been formulated and pressed in
different ways by a German and by an English
scholar.^ Their indictments do not appear to me

1 H. Nissen and F. M. Comford.

m THUCYDIDES 93

to be successful. The historian's account, which
can only be refuted by proofs of internal discrep-
ancy or of insufficiency, seems to be both con-
sistent and, with certain reserves, adequately

It will not be amiss to make a preliminary
observation on two words which Thucydides
uses in the sense of cause — airia and 7rp6<f>acrc<;,
airla has almost the same history as the Latin
equivalent, caussa. Its proper sense was "griev-
ance" or "ground of blame," "charge," and in
Thucydides it generally^ either means this or,
even when we can most appropriately translate it
by cause, impHes a charge or imputation, nrpo-
(fia(rc<i is an alleged reason, which may be either
true or false ; ultimately it became virtually
restricted to a false or minor reason, and so
equivalent to "pretext." In Thucydides it is
jQot so restricted ; he employs it in both ways.
And from meaning an alleged reason, it is evident
how easily it could come to mean a reason,
whether alleged or not ; in other words, a
" motive " or an " occasion," so that here it ap-
proximated very closely to the sense of "cause."
This various use of the word does not imply any con-
fusion of thought ; we use the word " reason " with
similar elasticity ; the context decides the sense.

jWhen a war breaks out, there are two things to
be explained which must be kept distinct : why the
aggressors go to war at all, and why they go to
war at the time they actually do. This distinction

1 But cp. iv. 87. 4.

94 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

is crucial, for instance, in the case of the outbreak
of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. In some
cases, the answer to both questions is the same ;
there may be no reason for the war, beyond the
particular circumstances which lead immediately to
its declaration. In the case of the Peloponnesian
war, Thucydides is careful to insist that this was
not so. There was a permanent motive for

I hostility, of such a Kind jhat war, sooner_or_later,
might be counted on as a certainty ; there were
also particular transactions which determined its
actual outbreak at a particular moment. When the
Lacedaemonians took steps to break the peace, of
course they did not mention the permanent and really
impelling motive, namely, jealousy of Athenian
aggrandisement, but rested their declaration on
certain recent actions on the part of Athens.
Thucydides puts it thus : " The true motive (77^0-
^a<Tt<i), jbhough it was not expressed in words, I
consider to have been the fear which the growth jof

4 the Athenian power caused to the Lacedaemonians^
but the publicly allegedgrounds^of complaint
{airiaii which prcvoked the jKar _I -will prjoceed* to
explain." and he enters upon the stories of Corcyra
ajidjVtidaeat. Thucydides accepted the convic-
tions expressed both by the Corcyraean ambassador
in his speech at Athens and by Pericles that a war
was unavoidable, and that it was merely a question
how long it might be postponed ; and we certainly
cannot prove that this judgment was wrong.

The distinction then between the real motive

Ill THUCYDIDES 95

of the Lacedaemonians, in the absence of which
they would not have declared war, and the par-
ticular actions which brought matters to a head and
determined the beginning of a war at a certain
date, is perfectly clear and valid. The further
question can be raised, whether in his account of
the affairs which moved the Peloponnesian alliance
to hostile action at a given moment, Thucydides
estimated rightly their proportional gravity. The
charge is that he has not given its due importance
to the Meganan business, whether failing to realise
its meamnff, or deliberately keeping it iiLthe back;
ground^n^rder^to devolve the responsibihty for
the war froniJthe^hDulders- xif-PericleS-JEbojQLails
rps£2!l!2]jfl--foj' ^^^ M^^gflrifln pnl^f^y. The second
insinuation I need not consider; for I will show
hereafter (in the next Lecture) that the historian's

flttitnH^ t,0 T>Prif»1f>g gnH hk pnli(»y i&.d£tached. I

will only observe here that if he had wished to
shield that statesman from the alleged responsi-
bility, it was clumsy of him not to suppress or
explain away the fact that in the final negotia-
tions the Lacedaemonians made Megara the test-
question, and said they would be satisfied if Athens
yielded on that point.

This ultimatum of the Lacedaemonians may
indeed appear, at first sight, inconsistent with the
subordinate role which the Megarian grievance
plays in the historian's narrative of the circum-
stances which led to the war ; and it has been
urged that instead of keeping it in the background

96 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

he ought to have assigned it the most prominent
place in the foreground. But a careful examina-
tion will show, I think, that the narrative is com-
pletely consistent, and embodies a closely reasoi^ed
account of the causes andjnQtiY£S_at worO
^^,^-The most casual reader receives the unmistak-
able impression that the Corinthians were the prime
instigators of the war, driving the Lacedaemonians
into action. The two affairs in which their interests
were exclusively involved, the affair of Corcyra and
the affair of Potidaea, are those which the author
designates as the direct occasion of the war ; and
the leading part taken by Corinth is emphasized
by the reproduction of two Corinthian speeches,
voicing Peloponnesian dissatisfaction. If the
deepest concern of Corinth was the action which
Athens had taken in regard to Megara by ex-
cluding her from the markets of the Athenian
empire, and thereby threatening her with eco-
nomic ruin, then it must be allowed that Thucy-
dides was entirely misinformed. In their speeches
at Sparta, the Corinthian envoys do not mention
the Megarian name, and the author expressly states
that their eagerness to have war declared imme-
diately was due to their anxiety for Potidaea.
Can we discover any proof as to the real interest
of Corinth in the Megarian question ?

When the Corcyraean affair occurred, Corinth
was so far from being anxious for war that she did
all she could to secure the goodwill and neutrality
of Athens. And she did not come with her hands

m THUCYDIDES 97

empty. She did not merely urge her claims on
Athenian gratitude for past services. She pro-
posed a deal (433 B.C.). Some time before this,
Athens had already initiated new designs on
Megara by a decree excluding Megarian wares
from Athens itself Corinth now said to her in
effect ; Leave us a free hand in dealing with
Corey ra, and we will leave you a free hand in deal-
ing with Megara. The Corinthian ambassador
put this diplomatically, at least in his speech
before the popular Assembly.^ He did not say :
You have improper designs on Megara, and we will
connive. He said : Your conduct in regard to
Megara has been open to suspicion ; you can allay
these suspicions by doing what we ask. It came
to the same thing.

This proposition on the part of Corinth shows
that in her eyes the independence of Megara was
not of crucial importance. Her interests there
weighed much less than her interests elsewhere.
It was the alliance of Athens with Corcyra, fol-
lowed by the affair of Potidaea, that determined
the colUsion of Corinth with Athens, and it was
this collision that precipitated a war which would
in any case have come later. The Megarian
decrees did not determine the action of Corinth,
and it was Corinth's action which was decisive.
On the other hand, once war was decided on by
Corinth and the war-party at Sparta, the griev-
ance of Megara formed an imposing item in the

» i. 42. 9.

H

98 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

list of Peloponnesian complaints and the general
indictment of Athenian policy. In this indictment,
the alliance of Athens with Corcyra, though it had
been the first of the effective causes which led to
the war, could not appear at all ; it could not be
represented as either illegal or immoral. The
attack on Potidaea could form a count ; but it
arose out of a compHcated situation, and a great
deal could be said on both sides. It was therefore
an obvious stroke of diplomatic tactics to move the
Megarian question into the foremost place, and
represent the cruelty of Athens to Megara as the
principal of her offences. The Lacedaemonians
said : Yield on this question and there will be no
war. It was a demand which no proud state, in
the position of Athens, could have granted, and
concession would have been simply an invitation
for further commands. The reply was : We deny
your right to dictate ; but we are perfectly willing
to submit all your complaints to arbitration in
accordance with the instrument of the Thirty
Years' Peace.

This is a perfectly_cQnsisteiit and intelligible
account of the origin of the warj is there any
reason for supposing that it is not true ? The
only positive evidence to which an appeal can be
made for rejecting it is that of Aristophanes, who
attributes the outbreak to the second Megarian
decree. This was the natural, superficial view, on
account of the prominence which had been given
to that decree in the final negotiation ; and it is

Ill

THUCYDIDES 99

not inconsistent with the Thucydidean account, in so
far as that, if Athens had yielded, the war might
have been avoided, or rather postponed. Further :
in evaluating the statement of the comic poet,
which doubtless reflected the current opinion of
the Athenian market-place, we must not leave out
of account the Athenian feeling against the war a
year or so after it had broken out, a feeling which
sought to lay the entire blame on Pericles and
wove legends round the Megarian decree.^ But
the popular opinion, expressed_by AristophaneSj,
does not really contradict the causal perspective of
Thucydides. It was precisely the notion which in
the given circumstances was most likely to be left
in the popular mind, if the occurrences were such
as Thucydides represents them.

There is another consideration which must not
be neglected. Unless we hold the doctrine that all
the speeches are entirely free inventions of his own,
as purely Thucydidean throughout in argument as
they are in style, — a doctrine which is untenable in
face of his express statement, — and that he adapted
the speeches of the first Book to a preconceived
construction of his own, the speeches were a most
important part of his material for forming his con-
clusion as to the causes and motives of the war.
He probably heard those delivered at Athens ; he
was informed of the tenor or heads of those de-

1 We do not know whether the Megarian business figured in the
Dionysalexandros of Cratinus (430-29 b.c), which satirised Pericles as
being the cause of the war. See the Argument of the play, recovered hj
Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. No. 663.

100 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

livered at Sparta ; and he has reproduced the drift
of these important pieces of evidence. Both in
what they say, and in what they do not say, they
bear out the justice of his construction and his
perspective.

It is a distinct question. What were the guiding
motives of the Athenian poUcy in regard to
Megara? Thucydides does not consider it, be-
cause it did not seem to him to have determined
the outbreak of the war, and was therefore, in a
narrow sense, irrelevant ; a modern historian would
not venture to treat it in this way. The object of
Athens was undoubtedly to recover control of the
Megarid which she had in recent times won and
lost ; and, to do this without violating the Thirty
Years' Peace, she resorted to economical pressure
which would starve her neighbour into voluntary
submission. Megara had a double value. Her
control would give Athens the power of blocking
the land route between the Peloponnesus and
Boeotia, and would also secure to her a direct
access to the Corinthian Gulf, for her commerce
or her troops.^ We cannot say which of these
consequences of the geographical position of
Megara counted more with Athenian statesmen,
in their unarmed aggression against a neighbour
with whom their relations had long been un-

^ F. M. Cornford has ably explained the geographical importance of
the Megarid as a commercial route between East and West, taking as his
text what he calls B^rard's " law of isthmuses " ; and those who do not
accept his inferences as a criticism of Thucydides must recognise the
value of hfs investigation.

Ill THUCYDIDES 101

friendly ; whether they-' were actuated rather by
the "long view" of the use of a port on the
Corinthian Gulf, for adding a western to their
eastern empire, or by the more obvious view of
erecting a barrier against the Peloponnesus. At
Sparta, we may be sure, it was the second danger
which would create more alarm. But however
this may be, there is nothing to show that if there
had been no affair of Corcyra and no affair of
Potidaea, the Megarian question by itself would
have caused the outbreak of the war at the time.

But the criticism to which Thucydides has been
exposed illustrates the disadvantages of his method,
when it is pressed too far. His principle is to
mention only effective policies, and to mention
tHem for the first time when they begin Jbo
become effective^ Tf Megara was a. pawn in
Athenian schemes of aggrandisement in western
Greece, it was never moved ; and in saying nothing
of this aspect of the Megarian question, the
historian is t^"^ tr> hk Tr^^^hnH If, in 433 B.C.
or before, some Athenian politicians had their
eyes on Sicily and Italy, the policy had no
results till 427 b.c., and therefore in passing over
with a bare mention the fact that Athens, in
accepting the Corcyraean proposals in 433 B.C.,
recognised Italy and Sicily as within the range of
her interests, he is again true to his method.

102 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

§ 4. His treatment of non-conteviporary history

JThucydides not only showed Greece how con-
temporary history should be studied and recorded ;
he also gave a specimen of a new way of handling
the history of past ages. He prefixed to his work
a general sketch of the /history of Hella^ which
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who by no means
appreciated its~merits;" justty described as equiva-
lent to an independent work. This sketch is
amazing in its power and insight.^j We must re-
^f'**' V member that it is confined strictly to one side of
j>> . \/ the historical development. It is intended to

% ^^^ !/ answer a definite question : how it was that

I ^^'^^iHl^^^ reppnt timps ]^n Igrcrp i\r\(\ p()^prfiil

I state had arisen in Greece:, and to explain the
I small scale of the military and political enter-

/ prises oT~tIie^ past.^ It does not touch on con-

I stitutional history at all, and the "period of the
tyrants " is only emphasized because their non-
aggressive policy was a relevant point in the
exposition. Within the limits to which it strictly , .
adheres, this outline is a most closely reasoned
argument and was the revelation of a totally new

-- way of treating history. We cannot endorse it
all ; and of the Homeric and pre- Homeric civilisa-
tion in Greece we have come to know within the
last thirty years more than Thucydides could
discover. But criticism of details is not to the
point; his sketch remains a shining example o£

y

L

m

THUCYDIDES

103

leer historical insight and grasp. Rising with
easy mastery over the mass of legends and details
which constituted the ill-ordered store of Greek
tradition, he constructs a reasoned march of
development, furnishing the proofs of his con-
clusions. He draws broad lines of historical
growth, elicits generaland essential facts from
the midtiLude,,..of_particulars, and characterizes
periods by their saUent features. He calls atten-
tion to the importance of considering conditions
of culture, and suggests the text for a history of
Greek civilisation. He turns the daylight of
material conditions on the mythical period, and
discovers in the want of resources the key to
certain sides of the development of Hellas.

He accepts, of course, like Herodotus and every

one else, the actual existence of heroes such as

Pelops, Agamemnon, Minos, for whom the

j genealogies seemed to vouch. ^ He did not

question the fact of the Trojan war ; but he

-f«4»'^

'i.

^ He takes a matter-of-fact account of the establishment of the Pelopid
dynasty in Argolis from some previous writer, i. 9. 2 \^yov<n dk /cat ol
Tct, cra<pi(TTaTa HeXoirowTjcriui' iJ.vf]ixri irapi. rCov Ttpdrepov Se5eyfj.4voi (where
TleXoTTovvrjciwv depends on oi). A Peloponnesian on ancient Argive
history suggests Acusilaus. We should expect a man interested in
history hke Thucydides to have read all or most of the historical works
which then existed. The only particular works he mentions (besides
Homer) are the avyy pa<l>r] 'Attikt) of Hellanicus and the Apology of
Antiphon ; but he refers generally to the works of poets and prose
writers {Xoyoypdcpoi, i. 21) on early Greece, and of prose writers he was
here thinking chiefly of Herodotus, whom he admittedly criticizes else-
where. It has been conjectured with much probability that in writing
the early chapters of Book vi. on the colonisation of Sicily he used the
history of Antiochus of Syracuse (Wolfflin). He cannot have failed to
know the books of Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus, which must have been
read with avidity at Athens.

104 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lkct.

inferred tluit such a fact meant the eminence
of a leading state in Cireece at the time, and
showed tliat an examination of the traditions
about it pointed to a general lack of resources.
He accepted IMinos ; and his instinct in em-
phasizing the Cretan thalassocracy seems to be
justified by the recent discoveries in Crete.
When he comes to a later time, he seizes with
a sure eye as the greatest and most important
fact of the two centuries before the Persian war
the revival of nautical powers and the growth of
navies. ■

111 his acute arguments he employs methods
which may be called mod,ern.. For instance, he '^'
points to the culture of backward parts of Greece '*"
as a survival of a culture which at one time in
the past prevailed generally. He quotes Homer ^»
as a witness for the conditions of his own age ^
without any reserve ; but when he quotes him
in evidence for facts about the Trojan war, he
adds a clause of caution. His proof of a Carian
population in the islands is not literary but I
arcliaeolo<>ical — Carian tombs which were dis- / ^
covered in liis own day when Delos was purifieu.'

Tlie outline of the growth of the Atheniaji

empire after the Persian wars is an exercise of_ a

dif]£ren_t kijjd. No history of this period existed

except what was furnished by the brief chronicle

of Hellanicus. The account of Thucydides is an | /
. . . . ' /

original contribution and embodies the results of,
... /'

his own iiK^uiries. He comments on the work ij

Ill THUCYDIDES 105

of Hellanicus, noticing its inadequacy and alleging
that it was chronologically inaccurate. Hellanicus,
as we saw, found a place for every event in an
archon y^ar, and I gave an instance of the errors
into which he fell through pretending to know
too much. Thucydides gives no absolute dates I
and very few chronological indications of any |
kind. It looks at first sight as if Hellanicus
might have retorted on Thucydides that he had
a curious notion of chronological precision. But
the point of the Thucydidean criticism was just
this, that there were no certain or sufficient data
for such precision, and that the chronological
exactness of/ Hellanicus ^as an illusion._^ We
may suspect further that in the order in which
he placed some of the events, he corrected
his predecessor. How far his corrections, for
which he must have relied on the memories of
older men, were right, we cannot say. But in u
any case, here too, he gave his contf'TPp^^^^ip^ ]
a salutary lesson in scepticism. He pointedly ^
abstains from rptff^rppg gf, f\]\ to the archon
yeaxsJ-- In his view the archon years, which ran
from July to July, were inconvenient and un-
suitable for a chronicle of military events, and

^ In the Pentekontaeteris. He is careful to mark the beginning of the
Peloponnesian war (ii. 2) by the archon, the Spartan ephor, and the
Argive priestess of Hera (this last dating, which he puts first, shows
the influence of Hellanicus, which has also been conjectured in iv. 133).
Similarly, when he starts afresh after the Ten Years' War, the date is
marked by archon and ephor, v. 25. But we may legitimately criticize
him for not having indicated formally the chronology of the four years
(435-2) which are treated in Book i. A date is obviously wanted in
c, 24.

'2-

^

106 ANCIENT GREEK HISTOIllANS lect.hi

liable to lead to serious inaccuracies. For this
reason he based his own military history on the
natural division of the year into summer and
whiter. That strict chronology was indispensable
for accurate history, Thucydides was fully con-
vinced. He proved it by casthig his own work
into tlie form of annals. He was an artist, and
he could not have failed to see as clearly as his
critics (like Dionysius of Halicarnassus) that the
annalistic frame was an awkward impediment to
any plan of artistic construction. The two claims
of chronological accuracy and a pleasing literary
arrangement are not irreconcilable, as other
historians, like Gibbon, have shown ; but Thucy-
dides did not attempt to combine them, and it
was characteristic that he should have preferred
the demand of historical precision to the exigencies
of literary art. His artistic powers were displayed
not in the architecture of his work, but in a
certain dramatic mode of treatment which will
be considered in the next lecture.

LECTURE IV

THUCYDiDES (continued)

§ 1. The Speeches

\ The historian has to do more than chronicle events.
It is his business to show why things Jiappened_aiid
to discover the forces which were at work. In
order to understand the meaning of historical facts,
he has to mpasiirf* thf! rihgj:gi2lf2-^ and penetrate the
motives of the .actors, as well as to realise the con-
ditions in which they acted. A psychological
reconstruction is thus always involved in history,
a reconstruction carried out in the mind of the
individual historian, and necessarily affected by his
personal temperament and his psychological ability.
Some one has said that a writer who could draw a
perfectly true and adequate portrait of Napoleon's
complex character would be a man whose own soul
was a counterpart of Napoleon's. This of course
is an extreme way of putting the case, for there is
such a thing as psychological imagination. But
the subjective process^ can never be eliminated. It
has diflfereirraspects"liPEhe cases of~contemporary
and non- contemporary historians. The contem-

107

k.

108 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

porary historian lives in the same miheu, in the
same sphere of ideas, and thus has more points of
common sympathy with the pohtical actors of his
time ; but, on the other hand, he cannot generally
avoid the bias of personal views of his own. The
historian of a past epoch may hope to be more
impartial, but he cannot hope to divest himself,
beyond a certain point, of the standards and
measures of his own age ; they are inwoven in
the tissue of his mind and they must affect his
attempts to reconstruct the past.

Thucydides has concealed this inevitable suit'
jective element by his dramatic method. The )
persons who play leading parts in the public affairs
which he relates reveal their characters and person- ;
alities, so far as is required, by their actions and
speeches. The author, like a dramatist, remains
in the background, only sometimes coming forward ;
to introduce them with a description as brief as in
a playbill, or to hidicate what men thought about i
them or the impression they made on their con-
temporaries. His rule is^to commit himself jto_no
personal judgments, and to this rule there are very_ i
few exceptions.. '^

Tlie characters of some of the political personages
are partly indicated in the speeches, of which I
must now speak. They are an essential feature
of the Thucydidean art. Herodotus had set the
example, but Thucydides used speeches for different
purposes and on a different scale, and adapted them
to a different method. He states explicitly how

IV THUCYDIDES 109

the speeches are to be taken and what they repre-
sent. In some cases he heard speeches delivered,
but it was impossible for him to remember them
accurately ; and in other cases he had to depend on
the oral reports of other^ His general rule was
to take the general^ drift and intention of the
sj)eaker, and from this; text compose ^hat he might
probably have said, /it is clear that this principle
gave great latitude to the author, and that the!
Resemblances of the Thucydidean speeches to those
Actually spoken must have varied widely according
Xp his information. They are all distinctly Thucy-
didean in style, just as the various characters in a
play of Euripides all use similar diction.' Homo-
geneity in style was a canon of most ancient men
of letters ; they shrank from introducing lengthy
quotations or inserting the ipsissima verba of docu-
ments. Occasionally Thucydides has probably
indicated personal mannerisms. For instance, in a
speech of Alcibiades there are one or two expressions
which are intended to suggest his characteristically
"forcible" style.^ But this has been done with
great reserve. Thucydides in his portraiture does
not depend on mannerisms. The speeches of
Pericles produce the effect of the lofty earnestness
of a patriotic statesman who is somewhat of an
idealist ; the speech of Cleon is that of a bullying
pedagogue. But the diction is the same. So in
Aeschylus, the nurse maunders, though she speaks

^ vi. 18 oiiK (<TTiv i]/jLiv rafueOeffdai ej 6aoi' ^ov\6fieda dpxetv, and aropiffUftev
rb <f)p6vr]ijia, — noted by the scholiast as /cot' 'AXKi^id8r)v.

110 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Aescliyl^an ; and the naivete of the policeman in
Sopliocles is sufficiently revealed though he does
not speak a policeman's language. \

But though Thucydides is always Thucydides,
yet within the compass of his style there are
remarkable variations. It is outside my scope to
enter upon this subject in any detail ; to do justice
to the styles of the writers who come before us
would require another set of lectures. But in the
case of Thucydides, I suspect that his different
styles have a certain meaning for the treatment of
his subject. It is patent to any reader that there
is a difference between the narrative and the
speeches, and that there are marked differences in
the speeches themselves. Obscurity is a reproach
which has constantly been brought against him
and of which he cannot be acquitted. But it is
not true of his work as a whole. The narrative is
generally clear and straightforward. If it stood
alone, we should never dream of describing him
as obscure. Nor is this description true of the
speeches indiscriminately. Some are lucid and
simple ; others excessively obscure ; in others again
we have perfectly simple passages beside sections
which, with Dionysius, we may designate as
conundrums or as darker than dark sayings of
Heracleitus.^ I have taken obscurity and difficulty
— difficulty which the Greeks felt no less than we

^ It has been rightly pointed out by MahafFy that it is a misapprehen-
sion to explain the obscurities of Thucydides as due to condensation of
thought. He is "condensed in expression but not in thought" {Greek
Littrature, ii. 1. 112).

IV

THUCYDIDES 111

— as a rough test of distinction. But on what does
this difficulty depend ? It depends on stylistic ^
technique. There is no doubt that Thucydides
was influenced by the rhetorical school of Gorgias, "^
though he was not dominated by it. He modified
it by peculiarities of his own ; but the affinity is
unmistakably shown in the artificial balancing of
clauses, the artificial verbal antitheses, the poetical v
phrase. Generally he keeps this tendency well in
hand, but in some passages he deliberately allows
it to run riot, and then he becomes obscure because
the grammatical constructions have to be twisted
unnaturally to subserve verbal effiscts. Some of
these crooked passages produced upon a Greek
ear almost the effisct of dithyrambs released from
the bonds of metre. Dionysius in his instructive
criticism takes two passages as conspicuous for this
fault (as he considered it), — the dialogue of the
Athenian and Melian diplomatists, and the re-
flexions upon the psychological and social aspects of
civil sedition. Both might be described as elaborate
studies in this kind of technique — the "obscure
and contorted style." It is unnecessary, nor have
I time, to illustrate it at length, but I will give one
brief example. It is said in the Funeral Oration
of Pericles, about soldiers who had fallen in battle :

of? iv€vBacfiov7Jcrai re 6 l3io<i ojj.olod'S koI ivreXevrrjcrat ^vv-

efierprjOr)} To cxprcss the meaning in tolerable
English we have to render somewhat like this :
" Whose days were so measured that the term of

1 ii. 44.

HL> ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

their lKi|)])iness was also tlie term of their life."
Rut this is a paraphrase, and it does not give the
effect of the (ireek. The literal translation is:
"I'or Avhoni life was made commensurate, to be
hap])v in and to die in, alike." (Even this fails to
bring out the force of the aorist tense ivevSat/j.ovi'jaaL
which suggests the ftmiiliar Greek saying, that a
man's life cannot be judged happy till after his
death.) Rut if the English is obscure and intoler-
able, to a Greek ear, such as that of Dionysius, the
Greek was hardly less so.

Now is there any significance in this remarkable
variation in style ? Is it purely capricious ? Does
Thucydides break into dithyrambic prose just
when, and simply because, he is in the mood ?
Such caprice would not be artistic, and it would
not be Greek. If the difference in style corre-
sponded to tlie disthiction between narrative and
speeches, the explanation would be ready. The
speeches, in any case, serve the artistic purpose of
pauses in the action ; they introduce the variety
which Herodotus secured by digressions ; they
fulfil somewhat the function of choruses in the
drama. xVnd so we should not be surprised to
find a corresponding variety in the diction and
technicjue. Rut the difference in style extends
hito the speeches themselves.

The ex})lanation which I would submit to you
is that when Thucydides adopts what we may
fairly call his unnatural style, when he is involved
and obscure, he is always making points of his

IV THUCYDIDES 113

own. In support of this view, I allege the follow-
ing considerations. (1) The meditation on the
party - struggles in Greek states, though not a
speech, belongs to this category. It interrupts
the action ; it is, in fact, a speech of the author.
And it is one of the flagrant examples of the
unnatural style, and is commented on, as such, by
Dionysius. Here then the author undisguisedly
adopts this style for his own reflexions. (2)
Secondly, take the Melian dialogue. Now whether
we think, as some do, that such a conference was
never held, or believe — and this is my opinion —
that it was held, all agree that the actual conversa-
tion is in the main fictitious. I will return to this
dialogue in another connexion. I would point out
now that it is a clear case in which the unnatural
style is employed for a political study of the
author. Contrast it, as Dionysius contrasts it,
with another dialogue, that between Archidamus
and the Plataeans. This is in the natural stvle,
and obviously gives the simple tenor of what
passed on the occasion. (3) My third proof lies
in the contrast between two of the speeches of
Pericles. The speech he delivered before the war
is so lucid and straightforward in style as to have
satisfied Dionysius ; and at the same time it is
perfectly appropriate to the situation, and no
doubt gives the general drift of the Periclean
argument. On the other hand, the speech which
he delivers in self-defence, when he became un-
popular, is marked in part by those obscurities

r

114 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIxVNS lect.

which excited tlie censure of Dionysius, and is
also distinguislied by unsuitable statements which
could not have been addressed by any statesman
to a public ^vhose favour he desired to recover.^

I infer that when Thucydides writes in the
unnatural stvle, he intends the reader to under-
stand that he has here to do with the author
himself — that the author is making points. When
he writes in the natural style, he is producing
documentary evidence. The speech of Pericles on
the eve of the war is virtually a document.

Let me make an application of this inference,
which I think has some interest. The Epitaph'ios
of Pericles is composed on the whole in the
unnatural style. ^ It enshrines, as I believe, some
utterances of Pericles himself; but the style is
generally contorted and obscure, though we for-
give, or may even find a certain pleasure in, this,
so lofty is the spirit and so fine the thoughts.
Now it is to be noted that, unlike other speeches,
this funeral address does not cast any direct light
on the events of the war, and that its tone is out
of keeping with the occasion.^ There was no
great action, no conspicuous deed of valour, in
the first year of the war, yet this oration over
the Athenians who fell in it is pitched in a key

^ I point out in the Appendix that it was composed or wrought over
after the end of the war.

■^ The epigram of the Thucydidean Pericles on the virtue of women
(ii. 4.")) may have been suggested by a saying of Gorgias. Wilaraowitz-
MollcndorflF, llirnvs, ii. p. ^'<)1..

^ This was observed by Dionysius.

IV THUCYDIDES 115

which would be appropriate to the burial of the
heroes of a Thermopylae. My view is thati
Thucydides has seized this occasion to turn the light
on Pericles himself. The Athens which Pericles
here depicts is an ideal ; and the purpose of the
historian is to bring out the fact that he was an
idealist. The very incongruity between the occa-
sion and the high-pitched strain of the orator
heightens the calculated impression that Pericles,
along with his political wisdom, possessed an
imagination which outranged realities.

If you were asked to translate into ancient
Greek '* he is an idealist," you could not, I think,
find a more exact equivalent than ^rjTel dXKo n, oxs
67709 elirelv, rj iv oU ^Mfjuev. This expression is applied
by Cleon (in his speech about Mytilene^) to the
Athenians in general, to whom it was hardly
appropriate ; it was, I take it, a covert hit at
the ethos and character of Pericles. Now both
this speech of Cleon and the counter-speech of
Diodotus are, by my criterion, largely composed
of matter which is purely Thucydidean. The
speech of Diodotus contains, you remember,
reflexions on the general theory of punishment — [
the earliest discussion of the subject in literature;
and we know from other evidence that this was
a question which had a special interest for Pericles.
I venture therefore to think that one of the
points which Thucydides wishes to make in these
speeches is, that the more lenient treatment of the

1 ii. 38. 7.

'^ . A '•

116 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

rebels of Mytilene was in accordance with the
spiiit of Periclean policy. With the spirit ; but
it might have been argued that it was not in
accordance with the letter and the logic ; and
this, I think, is one of the points which Cleon's
speech is intended to suggest. It is notable that
while the speaker makes, as I think, an oblique
hit at Periclean idealism, and strikes an anti-
Periclean note in his dispraise of knowledge and
criticism, at the same time he iterates phrases
which occur in the Periclean speeches : " Empire
means tyranny " ; ** Do not play the virtuous."
Thucydides is here studying not only the contrast
between the two politicians, but also the difficulties
inherent in the Periclean imperialism.

§ 2. Dramatic treatment of the historiae personae

The speeches in general served two purposes.
In the first place they were used by the author
To^ explain the, facts and elementgof a situation,
as well as underlying motives and ideas.. In some
cases the speech was only a dramatic disguise of
a study of his own. Thus, the characters of the
two protagonist cities, Athens and Sparta, are
delineated in a speech of a third party, the Corin-
thians : the author of this famous comparison was
unquestionably Thucydides himself But in other
cases he u<^es \\\e, actual expositions of politicians, —
genuine political documents so far as the main
tenor went, — as the most useful means of explaining

IV THUCYDIDES 117

a situation. The comparative advantages of the
two contending powers for the coming war are
stated in two speeches from opposite points of
view.^ The prospects and difficulties of the Sicilian
expedition are set forth by the same means.

The speeches had the second function — and
here I retiu-n to the point from which I set out —
of^serying the objective dramatic method of
indicating character which Thucvdides chose_ to
adopts The speeches of Pericles, Cleon, Brasidas,
Nicias, and Alcibiades, taken in conjunction with
their actions, reveal as much of their characters as
seemed to the author necessary for the matter in
hand ; that is, those sides of their nature which
in his opinion governed their public actions or
affected their political influence. The general
plan was that the nigna_ja,5^ well «« t,hf evpntSj
should speak or be made to speak for theniselv:es,
with little or no direct comment from the writer.

This method produced the illusion that the
actors showed themselves to the reader indepen-
dently of the author. It really meant that the
author had framed a psychological estimate of
them, as a dramatist constructs his characters :
an estimate founded on his knowledge of their
actions, but nevertheless no more than his own
subjective interpretation. The reader is here
almost as completely in the author's hands as in

^ In the second speech of the Corinthians and the first of Pericles.

^ Bruns (see Bibliography) was the first to study systematically the
methods of the ancient historians in depicting character. I am much
indebted to his well-known book.

^

.,

118 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

a drama. He has not the means of forming a
corrective judgment for himself; for he does not
, know how the historian has arrived at his results.

The application of the method may be observed
in the cases of Cleon and Nicias. Thucydides held
a distinct view of the character of Cleon as a poli-
tician. He allows us to see it reflected from Cleon's
actions and from the opinions of people about
him. When he describes Cleon as an influential
leader of the demos, who was very violent, namely
in manner and speech, he only states a fact which
was undoubtedly notorious and admitted. The
oration of Cleon on the Lesbian question exhibits
his fashion of rating the people like a pedagogue.
The drastic judgment that, if Cleon's command
at Pylos ended in disaster, this would be a great
blessing, for it would rid the city of Cleon, is not
recorded as the historian's own sarcasm ; it is
mentioned as the opinion of some people at
Athens. But as the people who thought so are
called "sensible" {ad)^pove<i), the disguise is here
very thin ; the writer permits his own assent to
be visible. No reader of the scenes in which
Cleon appears would be left in any doubt that
Cleon in the author's estimation was a pestilent
demagogue ; but in one passage ^ Thucydides
entirely abandons his dramatic reserve and ascribes
the worst motives to the politician for his unwill-
ingness to bring the war to a close.

The portrait of Nicias, the conscientious patriot,

1 V. 16, 1.

IV THUCYDIDES 119

"Ttn embodiment of respectability, cautious and
experienced, but unendowed with first-rate talent,
afraid of responsibility, afraid of the Ecclesia, is
perhaps the most successful achievement of Thucy-
dides in dramatic art. All this comes out in his
actions and speeches. But in this case too the
author once comes forward himself and directly
construes the motives which actuated Nicias in
working in the interests of peace. They were of
a selfish nature : he thought of his own reputation ;
he desired " while he had suffered no reverses and
was held in repute, to preserve his good fortune ;
he wished for rest himself as well as to give the
people rest ; he hoped to leave his name to posterity
as of one who had never brought calamity on the
city ; and he thought that the best means to secure
this was to trust as little as possible to fortune and
to keep out of danger, which would be avoided by
peace." ^ The irony is unmistakable. Again, in the
last scene, when Nicias has been executed at Syra-
cuse, the historian appears before the curtain for
a moment and pronounces an epitaph, the point
of which posterity has frequently misunderstood.
It is generally taken as an encomium ; it is really
malice. In my opinion, says Thucydides, Nicias
deserved such an end less than any other Athenian,
considering his conventional virtue.^ In other
words, a man of such conventional virtue was
unsuited for such an unconventional end. That

^ V. 16. 2 (Jowett's translation).
' vtvofU(Tnh>7l. This interpretation is favoured by F. Cauer.

120 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

is irony of a kind in which Thucydides rarely
indulges ; behind it lurks the suppressed judgment
that Athens was unfortunate in the trust which
she reposed in Nicias, the model of irreproachable
respectability.

In the case of Alcibiades the historian dwells
on the extravagance and display of his private life,
because they had a direct influence on the feelings
of the Athenians towards him, and affected his
public career and the course of the war. But here
too the character is revealed in actions and words ;
insolence and ambition come out in his orations,
and, as I have already observed, some strong phrases
seem to be characteristic of his manner. Thucy-
dides refrains from commenting on his character, but
points out his services and shows that the Athenians
regarded him with a suspicious apprehension which
prevented them from profiting by his ability.

In the cases of Themistocles, Pericles, and
Antiphon, the author departs from his usual
practice, and gives characterising judgments of
his own. In the case of Themistocles this might
be considered a necessary exception, as he does not
come into the main narrative and cannot reveal
himself dramatically. The same reason might be
held partly to apply to Pericles, since the greater
part of his lifework was over when he comes on
the stage. The favourable notice of Antiphon 's
ability might also be explained by the fact that
he had hardly appeared in the political arena before
the year of the revolution, and his appearance then

IV THUCYDIDES 121

was so brief. The eulogy on Antiphon indeed has
a personal note, which betrays perhaps a friendship.
It is, however, futile to seek to explain or explain
away these exceptions. The truth is that in
general Thucydides is dramatic, but he has not
carried his method to extremes.

It is noteworthy that nearly all the judgments
which he pronounces concern intelligence and ,
political ability. This is the case with Themi- ^
stocles, Pericles, Antiphon, Theramenes, and
Hermocrates. They all receive greater or less
praise for political capacity, which in the case of
Themistocles is said to have amounted to genius. ^

The case of Hyperbolus demands a few words,
because it illustrates the method of Thucydides
and his political leanings. In the years between
the Fifty Years' Peace and the Sicilian Expedition,
the division of parties under the opposing leaders
Nicias and Alcibiades paralysed the foreign policy
of Athens and hindered continuity of action. The
situation was so serious that the only way out
seemed that proposed by the demagogue Hyper-
bolus— a trial of ostracism, which would expel one
of the rivals and secure unity. Alcibiades frus-
trated this device by combining, if not with his
(rival, at least with a sufficiently large oligarchical
faction, to procure the ostracism of Hyperbolus.
Thucydides does not say a word about this affair,
though of course he was perfectly aware of the
facts, and though they had an immediate bearing
on the foreign policy of Athens. We must suppose

//

NCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

that as the purpose of the ostracism was defeated
and the relative positions of the two leaders were
not altered by the vote, he considered it super-
fluous to record the occurrence. It will be
admitted, however, that a modern historian who
allowed himself such an omission or carried his
principle of exclusion so far, would not escape
censorious criticism. But in another connexion,
Thucydides refers to the ostracism, without dating
it, or in any way suggesting its significance.
Hyperbolus was killed in 411 b.c. at Samos.
Thucydides records this and mentions that Hyper-
bolus had been ostracized. This is the only place
where he names the demagogue, who in the years
following Cleon's death had been one of the most
influential speakers in the Ecclesia. We might
suspect that in ignoring this politician, just as he
ignored men of the same type Uke Eucrates and
Lysicles, he exercised a reserve which was equi-
valent to an adverse criticism, a negative expression
of contempt ; but no doubt is permitted by the
words in which he paints his memory black.
Hyperbolus was ostracized, we are told, nofl
because he was esteemed dangerous, but becaus?
he was an unprincipled scoundrel and a disgrace
to the city. The same epithet {/xoxOvpo^) is here
applied to Hyperbolus which was applied to him
by Aristophanes.^ We may note how Thucydides
violates here his own principle orrelevanee. — At
this moment, Hyperbolus is not interesting or

» Knights, 1304.

IV THUCYDIDES 123

important, and in holding up his character to
reprobation the historian is deviating from his
narrative. Again, what he says of the cause of
the ostracism is untrue. Hyperbolus was not
ostracized because he was a disgrace to the city,
whether he was so or not. He would not have
been ostracized if the supporters of Alcibiades had
not been instructed to write his name on the sherds
instead of that of the virtuous Nicias. We know
very little about Hyperbolus; but (this judgment
of Thucydides cannot be taken as objective or
impartial. It is quite clear that he had a profound
antipathy to popular leaders like Cleon and Hyper-
bolus, and that he was incapable of doing them
whatever justice they deservedN And such anti-
pathy is sufficient to account for the treatment
of Cleon, without invoking a further motive of
personal resentment for any part Cleon may have
taken in procuring the condemnation of the
historian.^

§ 3. Rationalistic view of history

r I It is by his practice of allowing his characters to \ \
I reveal themselves by their actions and words, while
\ keeping himself m the background, although he
j does not adhere to this plan with p^dp^tip pon-

sistency. thtlt the art r>^ Thnpyrlirlp*; Tinfly bp

appropriately called drjiniatic. The description of
" dramatic " has indeed been claimed for his history

^ F. M. Comford touches on this point in his Thucydides Mythistoricus.
I think he is right. The hypothesis of personal spite is superfluous.

124 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS leot

on another ground. It has been thought that he
viewed the whole war under the scheme of a
tragedy, in which the Sicilian expedition was the
peripeteia or *' reversal " of fortune for Athens.
This idea has recently been developed in a new
shape by Mr. F. M. Cornford, in a brilliant study
which seeks to establish that the historian read
Aeschylean conceptions into the events of the war
and mounted it, like a tragedy, with the dark
figures of Tyche, Hybris, Peitho, and Eros,
moving in the background and prompting the
human actors. That such a conception should
be read by an ingenious scholar in a work which
impresses the ordinary reader as entirely matter
of fact in its treatment of political transactions,
illustrates what a wonderful book the history of
Thucydides is. The truth is, I think, that the
style of Thucydides was influenced by the Attic
, drama, no less than by the rhetoric of Gorgias, and
it is one of the merits of Mr. Comford's mono-
graph to have illustrated this influence. But that
the tragic phrases and reminiscences, and the occa-
sional use of tragic irony, cannot be held to have
more than a stylistic significance, and that Thucy-
dides did not intend to cast the war into the typical
scheme of a tragic development, will be apparent if
"^ we consider his own clear statements. \
W^, (^ His view of the causes of the coUapsp ni |r\thens

JJ^ . s ' displays the diff^erence between his own outlook on
J^ human affai£S__and that of Herodotus. The older

y ^^' ' historian poVirtraying the collapse of the Persian

IV THUCYDIDES 125

power discerns, in the development of the plot,
imminent above the actors a superhuman control
and the occult operation of nemesis. The only
external influence recognised by the younger writer
appears in the form of the^ mcalculable^ement ^)
which he calls Tjiche, Chance. \ Herodotus inter-
preted history and life, in the sense that the decline ^^ \
of a state or of a man from a post of commanding
eminence was due to the action of a supernatural
power which would not tolerate the exaltation
which invariably leads to immoderate elation of soul
and often to acts of insolence and rashness. "4n
one of the speeches in Thucydides this anthropo-
pathic idea is translated into the dry formula : " It ^ )
is the nature of human things to decline." But
it can hardly be said that he believed unreservedly
in this principle (which may be found, in Ionian
philosophers) as a certain fact. And ^is analysis
of the course of the war and his explanation
of its issue show that the operation of the incal-
culable element of chance need not be decisive.
Itcontributed to t>i#^ dcrlinr of thr Atjippia^^
power, but that power might have survived and
defied its outrages, ifit had not been ^^^ biiman
,^ismana|jement.

In the early stage of the war there were two
cases of the play of the incalculable. There was
first of all the plague. But though severe, maim-
ing and weakening more than anything else the
offensive power of the State for years to come, it
was not crushing, it did not spell doom ; one of its '^ ^r

126 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

gravest consequences was the psychical effect upon
the Athenians, for which Pericles suffered. The
other surprise of fortune was a kind one, the
combination of circumstances which helped the
"Athenians to their stroke of luck at Pylos. This
elated them, as the pestilence had cast them down.
Instead of grasping the opportunity of making
advantageous terms and bringing to an end a war
which they would gladly have concluded on any
terms a few years before, they were incited to
hopes of new conquest. But the consequences
were by no means disastrous ; the Peace of 421
B.C. left the balance of power much the same.

They had recovered from the effects of the
plague and the war when they undertook the
! conquest of Six^ily 'mJd5 b.c. The catastrophe of
jthat enterprise was the beginning of a gradual
*yaV.^*^^ 'decline, which was determined by domestic, dissen-
— jSions in Athens, and afterwards by the intervention

|of Persia. A modern historian has designated the
Sicilian expedition as an act of insanity, an instance
of a whole people gone mad, analogous to the case
of England in the Crimean war. But this was
not the opinion of Thucydides. He says, and he
is speaking in his own name, that it was not an
error of judgment in the design or in the calcula-
tion of strength, and would have been a success, if
it had been properly supported and carried out.
The verdict of the modern writer was influenced
partly by ethical considerations ; the verdict of
Thucydides did not take ethics into account ; he

\/\£.^-^

y^'

1

IV THUCYDIDES 127

only contemplates the question whether, judging
the strength of Athens and the resistance offered
to her, the ambition of extending her empire to
Sicily was reasonable or foolish. The failure of
the enterprise and the reverses of the ensuing years
he imputes to the dissensions at home ; and in the
same way he explains mismanagement in the earlier
period of the war by the jealousies of rival poli-
ticians. In other words, the key to the decline pf ^
Athenian power was the fact t hat^ericles^ had_lip \
successors. The cityjegan to fall away from_ hfir ^
eminence when her govemmenij^as_jio_ longer
controlled by pt\ «^^^ lf*arlf>Tl

Even after the Sicilian ~^xpedition, the situation ji^ ^^^
might have been retrieved ; for there was a man
marked out to be a leader like Pericles, if the ^ '
Athenians had trusted him. This was Alcibiades. '^
That this was the view which Thucydides formed
of Alcibiades can, I think, admit of little doubt.
The distrust of the Athenians, he says, contributed
heavily to the fall of the city ; Alcibiades con-
ducted the war with masterly ability.^ In other
words, things would have turned out very~'dif-
ferently, if the conduct of affairs had Been
entrusted to him. The distrust is attributed to
the somewhat insolent display and splendour of his
private life, which excited envy and the suspicion
of tyrannical designs. Nicias taunts him with this
Xa/MTTpoTT)^, Alcibiades glories in it.^ Now the career
of Alcibiades had remarkable points of resemblance

1 vi. 15. 2 vL 12 ; 16.

128 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

with that of a great Athenian statesman of a former
age, Themistocles. They were both banished from
Athens ; both conspired with her enemies against
her ; and Alcibiades like Themistocles became a
trusted adviser of the Persians. But another
point of likeness is indicated by Thucydides, \afi-
7rp6rr}<;. It is not for nothing that he describes
Themistocles and Pausanias as the most magni-
ficent or luxurious of the Greeks of their time
(Xa/iTT/joraTOf?). That was a weak point in the case
of Themistocles as in that of Alcibiades ; it led to
the suspicion of tyranny. This parallel suggests
that one motive of the digression on Themistocles
was to point it. At all events it throws light on
the view of the historian. Athens produced three
men who had the faculty, which cannot be learned
by study, for guiding the affairs of a great state,
Themistocles, Pericles, and Alcibiades. Two of
them fell into the snare of luxurious splendour,
which ruined their careers, Pericles avoided that
pitfall, and won and retained the public confidence.
This contrast, I would observe, gives special point
to a famous phrase in the Epitaphios. Pericles
himself was ^i\,6KaXo<i fier euTeXeta?, he was not
'Kafiirpo^, he indulged his private tastes without
undue or obtrusive expense.

{This analysis, which is furnished by the his-
toriah's__owTi comments. eliminates_entirely the
dim superstitious notions of doom and nemesis,
which do duty for Providence in Herodotus and
^dispense the spectator from any deeper study of

IV THUCYDIDES 129

the course and causes of events. Thucydides deajs
with purely human elements ; human biains l)£3r

the ultimate responsibility. There is nothijQg

mysterious about thefact that events cannqtj^e
foreseen. The course of events, says Pericles, may
sometimes be as incalculable by reason as the
thoughts of a man's mind. Thucydides does not
regard the plague as a divine dispensation. It
was simply an occurrence which could not be fore-
seen, exactly as you may not foresee the moves of
your enemy. Herodotus credits the oracles with^ 'inLa.ct
mysterious knowledge : Thucydides occasionally ] " ^'
r^fersto oracles, but their sole significance fqr_him \
l^es in the psychical effect they produce on thjoge j
yho beTieve. them> Of the oracle which predicted
that the war would last twenty-seven years, he drily
observes that it is the only one to which people
who put their faith in oracles can point as having
been certainly fulfilled. Here he was at the same
standpoint as Anaxagoras and Pericles.^ The
philosophers who had established the reign of law ,'
had not written in vain for Thucydides.^ Chance c>U>*.a
means for him the same kind of thin^ that it
means for us ; it does not signify the interference,
orfljT_exterT}al will or caprice: it simply repres£iLbs
an element which cannot be foretold. He recog-
nises the operation of the unknown ; he does not
recognise the presence of "things occult." And

' He speaks indeed strangely of the frequency of solar eclipses during
the war (i. 23. 3), as if they had some significance for the human race ;
we may wonder what comment Anaxagoras would have made.

^ Cp. Gomperz, Oriechische Denker, i. p. 61 (on Heracleitus).

K

130 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

he reduces the unknown to its minimum of signi-
ficance for human life. The great philosopher,
Democritus of Abdera, had said : " Chance is an
idol which men fashioned to excuse their own
mental incapacity. As a matter of fact chance
seldom conflicts with wisdom. In most affairs of
; life, an intelligent mind can exercise clairvoyance
with success."^ These words of Democritus
miffht serve as a motto for Thucydides.
\j^ . The_el£ioents for the conception of the war as
h^^] a tragedy^_in_Jbhe proper sense of the word, were
I absent from his_interpretation of the course of
history. There was no mysterious controlling
force, no doom or retribution, no inevitable decree
of fate, no moral principle at stake. The lessons
which the catastrophe conveyed were not moral or
I cathartic. The war was fuU of instructive lessons
j jfor statesmen and generals • but those lessons were
^ Assuredly of a very different order from the legggg^
of Aeschylus and Sophocles. And the occasional
use of phraseology, which the tragedians charged
with meaning, should not mislead us. Just as a
writer of the present day who is completely inno-
cent of any traffic with the supernatural may
employ such terms as fate, doom, nemesis, so
Thucydides could borrow the personified abstrac-
tions of tragedy for purposes of expression, without
meaning to suggest anything occult. If I say that

^ Democritus, in Mullach, Froff. Phil. 167. Thucydides observes
tub persona Hermocratis (iv. 62. 4) that in war the incalculable element
has its uses ; it is the same for both and conduces to caution and
prudence.

IV THUCYDIDES 131

I have been prompted to do something by an imp
of mischief or by a demon of unrest, you will not
impute to me a belief in demons or imps. If
Thucydides has sometimes expressed psychological
observations in the language of tragic poets, this
does not prove that he looked at history from a
tragic poet's point of viewA

§ 4. Political analysis

[Attempts have inevitably been made to peer
behind the scenes and discover the personal political
views or tendencies of this singularly reserved
historian. Dionysius, a critic who is usually in-
structive though never profound and often obtuse,
stigmatizes in Thucydides a lack of patriotism so
marked as to amount to positive ill - will both
towards Greece and towards Athens. " He began
at a point where the Greek world had begun to
decline. A Greek and Athenian should not have
done this, especially one who was no outcast but
had been honoured by the Athenians with high
command. He was so malicious that he imputed
to his own city the open causes of the war, though
he might have found means to attach the responsi-
bility to other cities. He could have begun not
with the Corcyraean affair but with the supreme
successes of his country after the Persian war, and
could have shown that it was through jealousy and
fear, the consequence of these successes, that the
Lacedaemonians, alleging other reasons, began the

132 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

war." ^ When this criticism is examined, it will be
found that it mainly touches the arrangement of
the first Book,^ but it shows that the narrative
produced upon Dionysius the impression that
Thucydides was unpatriotic.

On the other hand, it is held by some modern
critics that the account of the beginnings and first
years of the war is virtually a defence of the policy
of Pericles, and it is even insinuated that tht
author manipulated facts, concealing some and
mitigating others, with the purpose of presenting
that policy in a favourable light. yhis view
evidently contradicts that of Dionysius ; it implies
that Thucydides sympathized with Athens during
the Periclean regime and at the outbreak of the
war.

The fact_that the narrative can convey two such
CO ntradictory^ impressions is a certificate of tlie
author's critical impartiality. The censure of
Dionysius is based on the conventional principle of
later times that it is a historian's duty to be patri-
otic at all costs, to sacrifice his critical judgment;^
and it is superfluous to refute his charge of ill-
will. On the other hand, the theory that Thucy-
dides was an unreserved admirer of Pericles and
deliberately intended to exalt and defend his policy,
almost as a partisan, has some prima facie plausi-
bility, and, as it has a direct bearing on the writer's

^ Letter to Pompeius, 3. 9.

- But he also blames Thucydides, 3. 4, 5, for the choice of his subject.
The war was oSre KuXbs oihe eiirvx^i, and therefore should be forgotten and
ignored by posterity.

IV THUCYDIDES 133

attitude to history and politics, we must consider
it more particularly.

We have seen how Thucydides speaks in the
highest terms of the political ability of J'ericle^, and
was convinced that, if he had lived or had a
successor as able as himself, the war would have
terminated favourably for Athens. But this general
conviction would be quite compatible with dis-
criminating criticism. The jtribute which he has,
paid to Pericles does not imply that he saw eye to
eye vnth the statesman in all things or held his
political faith^ There are proofs, in my opinion,
jhatJie exercised here. as_in_other cases, a cold
independent judgement, and had no scruples in
je:>^hibiting weak points —

The speeches of Pericles claim our special atten-
"^tion. I may begin by pointing out that the praise
which Pericles bestows in the Epitaphios^ on the
democratic constitution of Athens, implying that
it was an ideal form of government, is not in
accordance with the view of Thucydides, who
expressly states that in his opinion the short-lived
poUteia which was established in Athens after the
fall of the Four Hundred was not merely superior
to democracy, but was the only good constitution
that Athens had enjoyed in his lifetime.^ In other
words, he did not consider democracy a good con-
stitution. In the second place, we may feel con-

1 ii. 37.

^ viii. 97 KoX oix ^xiara S'Jj rhv wpuTov xpSvov iirl y' i/iov ' KO-qvaioi
fpalvovTM e5 iroKiredaavTes. Is the reserve ivL 7' ifxav simply cautiousness,
or is it an allusion to the Trdrpios TroXtreio of early times ?

134 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

fident that the eloquent and fascinating portrait of
Athens, drawn by Pericles, did not in the historian's
opinion correspond to reality. It was the Peri-
-^^^ clean ideal. And Thucydides knew perfectly well
that the claim that Athens was the school of liberal
education for Greece would have been scouted
by other states ; and, as a matter of fact, it did not
become anything of the kind till after the Pelopon-
nesian war. Again, it seems more than doubtful
whether Thucydides approved of the Periclean
policy of bringing all the inhabitants of Attica into
the city. The length at which he dwells on the
unpleasant consequences of this arrangement, his
pains in showing how distasteful it was to the
people, suggest that he considered it a measure of
highly questionable wisdom^

He certainly looked on Pericles as the most
successful statesman who had recently guided the
counsels of Athens. But he saw him, like all his
other dramatis personae^ in a^dry light, and, .as I
havesuggestedy he has, presented one side of the
statesman!s_mind with a certain veiled irony.

The dramatic detachment_of Thnr^ydidp*^ r^^p/lily
produced the in^essioa- that he was unpatriotic.
He allows every party to state their case as
strongly_and persuasively as pns«;ib1f>. But while
he wrote not as a patriot but as a historian, it is
Athens, not Sparta, the Athenian Empire, not the
Peloponnesian Confederacy, in which the interest
of the narrative centres throughout. As to the
questions at stake and the issues involved in the

IV THUCYDIDES 185

war, what we may hope to discover is not what
political views the historian held, but what was his
attitude of mind in observing political events.

His interest centres in the Athenian empire.
In the passage in which he offers a general explana-
tion of the result of the war he writes .from the
Athenian side entirely. Now as to the nature of
the Athenian empire he has no illusions. — Ifl-the*
first Book he unfolds the unscrupulous way in
which it was acquired, with perfect candaur.. He
states that it was generally unpopular, and he
allots a speech to an indictment of it by one of the
subject states. That it was a despotism based not
on right but on might is not merely alleged by the
opponents of Athens but is emphasized by Athenian
speakers. The Athenian diplomatist who spoke at
the Congress of Sparta characterizes it without any
reserve as having been won from motives of self-
confidence and ambition ; and the justification
assigned is that it is a law of human nature that
the weaker should be constrained by the stronger.
Pericles is still more candid and emphatic. " The
Empire you possess," he says, "is a tyranny; it
may have been unjust to acquire, it is perilous to
relinquish it." Again : " That man is truly wise
who incurs odium for the highest stakes. Hatred
does not balance the present magnificence and the
future fame." Here power, wealth, and glory are
assigned as a justification of an unjustly gotten and
unpopular empire. Arguing against the peace-
party — oi dirpdyfiovef; — who have scruples about

136 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

justice, Pericles takes the same line, though with
more cynicism, as a modern British chauvinist con-
temptuous of those whom he calls the Little Eng-
landers. He sneers at their conscience, which, he
suggests, is a cloak for cowardice. Alcibiades in
advocating the Sicilian expedition points out the
necessity to imperial states of an active and aggres-
sive policy. Hermocrates, the enemy of Athens,
does not complain of such a policy on grounds
of morality ; he says : "I can fully pardon the
Athenians for their grasping policy ; I do not
blame those who seek empire, but those who are
ready to submit ; for it has always been the natural
instinct of man to rule him who yields and to resist
the aggressor."

The excuse which both Hermocrates and
Athenians urge for the acquisition of empire is
the instinct of human nature. But Pericles also
attempted what may be called a justification on
higher grounds. In the Funeral Oration he draws
a picture of the grandeur and the culture of
Athens. There, he so much as says, is the ideal
which our city, by winning power and wealth,
through an empire which was certainly not built
on foundations of justice, has realised for the
admiration and imitation of Hellas. Such things
cannot be achieved by timid justice and stay-at-
home piety. This is the leit-motif of the Funeral
Oration.

JThus the historian kept before h^^nself^ ind
keeps before^us. the fact that the erpp'^p rannot h^

IV THUCYDIDES 137

defended on^rounds of justice, that it could not be
maintained except by force majeure, and that if
slavery was an extreme word for the condition of
the subject states, they were generally reluctaitt
under the yoke^ It is further to be observed that
when Thucydides makes occasional reflexions of
his own, he never takes justice or morality into
account, from which we may infer that in his
estimation those conceptions did not illuminate
the subject He recognised that the ideal of
justice was an actual psychological force and could
not be neglected by statesmen, any more than
popular religion. But he did not consider it worth
while to apply the standard of just.if^e in estim^t^^g
political transactions, just fl,*; hp did npt (^sk whether
an action was pleasing; to the ^OQsX

The speech of Diodotus, "aHvocating lenient
treatment for the rebels of Mytilene, is interesting
in this connexion. As the speaker played no part
in history except here, the harangue must be intro-
duced solely for the sake of its arguments. Its
chief interest is that it repudiates the intrusion of
justice into the question ; the speaker reproaches
Cleon for having dragged in so irrelevant a con-
sideration, and bases his own view entirely on
reasons of state. Thucydides with his usual reti-
cence abstains from comment, though the tone of
his narrative suggests that he sympathized with the
lenient policy ; but the fact that he chose these
speeches of Cleon and Diodotus for working up,
and that he has worked them up largely in the

^y

1

138 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

style which he employs when he is not docu
mentary, shows that his interest lay in the logic of
'policy.

In the light of the debate on Mytilene we may
consider the notorious debate of the Athenian and
Melian representatives. Melos, you remember,
was an independent stq-te. Athens had made an
attempt to force her into her empire in 426 b.c. ;
the idea was not resumed till 416 b.c., but in the
meantime the relations of the two states had been
hostile. When the expedition reached the island,
the generals sent envoys to demand submission.

They were admitted to a round-table conference

•1^

with members of the^ Melian government, and j
Thucydides ^ives in the form of a dialogue what j
purposes to be the tenor of the debate. That such|
a conference was held, there cannot be a reasonable
doubt, nor is it improbable that Thucydides had
something to work upon. There is no difficulty in "
supposing that he might have heard enough from
some one who knew to furnish him with a text. \
The note of the dialoguejs-the elimination of -
justice from th^ discussion^ by the Athenians.
"Lass unsern Herr Gott aus dem Spass." Thej
field of the argument is confined to policy and
reason of state. When the Melians essay to find
an issue from this restricted ground by observing^ J
that, being innocent of wrong, they expect a|
heaven-sent chance to intervene in their favour,
the Athenians retort that gods as well as men
recognise it to be a law of nature that the weaker

IV THUCYDIDES 139

should be ruled by the stronger. Now this is
nothing more than what had already been said by
Hermocrates and the Athenian envoy at Sparta.
The attitude of the Athenians on this occasion is
exactly the same as that of Diodotus in arguing
for leniency towards Mytilene. Both alike are ^- sJ
ruthlessly realistic ; both alike refuse to consider '^
any reason but reason of state. The conscience
and feelings of the readers of Thucydides have
been shocked by the tone of the Athenians
at Melos because they sympathize with Melos ;
whereas they are not shocked by Diodotus because
they sympathize with Mytilene. Yet Diodotus in
427 B.C. regarded Mytilene just as Athens in
416 B.C. regarded Melos, merely as a pawn in the
game of empire. It is also important to observe
that the discussion in the Melian council-chamber
before the siege has nothing to do with the rigorous .
treatment of the people after the capture of the '^
city. A few years before, Athens had meted out
the same treatment to Scione ; all the adult males
were killed, the women and children enslaved.
Thucydides makes no comment in either case.
But if Athens had contented herself with reducing
Melos to the condition of a tributary, the notorious
dialogue would have been equally to the point.
The policy of annexing Melos was one thing, the
policy of punishing was another ; Thucydides does
not express his views on either. But it has been
supposed by various critics that he introduced a
cynical dialogue for the purpose of holding up to

^

J

140 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

obloquy the conduct of Athens, and even of making
it appear an ill-omened prelude to the disastrous
expedition against Sicily. This theory will not, in
my opinion, bear examination. Thucydides, as we
have seen, did not consider that the Sicilian expedi-
tion was ill-advised in principle, and he does not
hint that any consequences, bad or good for Athens,
ensued from the conquest of Melos.

The truth is, I think, that Thucydides tookthe
opportunity of the round-table conference to
exhibit, pure and unvarnished, the springs of
political action. The motives and arguments of
the Athenians, whether wisely or unwisely applied
in this particular case, were nothing new; they
were the same which lay at the foundation of all
their empire-building. This was the first case of a
new annexation since the outbreak of the war, and
iJLSLas-thft first occasJQii-QiFfired^^tojbhe historian to
analyse imperial policy from the point of view of
aggression ; he had already examined it from the
point of view of preservation. The Melian dialogue
only develops more undisguisedly and expressly —
and the circumstance that no public was present
gave the author the artistic pretext for candour —
what is to be found in all the argumentative
speeches : that not justice but reason of state is the
governing consideration which guides the agtion o?
cities and claims the interest of historians.
i We are now in a position to understand jthe
attitude of Thucydides. His_object is to examine
and reveal political actiims from an eooLhrnneht

IV THUCYDIDES 141

political point of ^;^g«?. Jle does not consider moral^ ^^
standards; his nie^j^d, is jealistic_and^ detached ;
he takes history as it is and examines it on its own
merits^ This detached analytical treatment is illus-
tratedoy the earliest political prose pamphlet we
possess, written by a contemporary of the historian
in the early years of the war ; I mean the short
tract on the Athenian Constitution. The author
was an oligarch and declares without reserve his
personal hostility to the democracy ; but it is not a
polemical work. He detaches himself from his
own feelings, places himself at the point of view of
democrats, and examines democracy exclusively in
this light. Applying his acute logic, he demon-
strates that the institutions of Athens could hardly
be improved upon. The writer is intellectually
allied to Thucydides in the detachment of his atti-
tude and the logical restriction of the issue under
a particular point of view.

Now when Thucydides offers reflexions in (L^
^j^roj^ria persona on evente, his criticisms, on the rju^V^uyav
policy of Athens, for instance, or oji the value of an v/
Athenian politician, are generally determined by
the consideration whether they were conducive to
success or failure in the war. ^In his appreciation
of Brasidas, he places himself at the point of view "0
of Sparta, and recognises that this general's con-
duct, policy, and character were conducive to the
extension of Spartan power in competition with
Athens. He takes the objects of the conflicting
states as given, without approving or condemning ;

142 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

and in recording acts and methods his^rare verdicts
of praise or blame are confined_to the questjgn
whether those acts and methods were calculated to

achieve their object^; just as in characterizing a
man he refers only to his intellectual powers. He
offers no opinion whether the aims were justifiable
or admirable ; he applies no ethical standard to
policies or politicians.
I Of course, he was fully conscious of ethical
questions which arise in connexion with high
politics, and these questions raise their heads in
the dramatic parts of the work. In the speeches,
justice and expediency are frequently distinguished
and opposed. A speaker, for example, according
to circumstances, is concerned to show that a
course which is just is also expedient, or that
expedience ought to be preferred to justice.
Sometimes the consideration of justice is briefly
dismissed as irrelevant. It appears as a psychical
factor actually operative in international transac
tions, a principle to which at least homage of the
lips was paid, by which praise and blame were
popularly awarded, and which therefore had to be
taken into account. But its role was slight and
subordinate : the dramatist could not ignore it,
though he allows it as small a range as he can ; the
thinker dismissed it. [

There is not, so far as I can discover, any reason
for believing that Thucydides thought or intended
to suggest that an uncompromising policy of self-
interest conduced to the fall of the Athenian

IV THUCYDIDES 143

empire, or that her wrong and unwise actions

were wrong and unwise because they were guided

k by considerations of expediency alone. There is

no ground for supposing that he would have

khad a thought of censure, if he had lived in our
own days, for statesmen like Cavour and Bismarck
and Disraeli, who were guided exclusively by
reason of state, and are therefore blamed by
moralists for having debased the moral currency
in Europe. If, instead of a history, Thucydides
had written an analytical treatise on politics, with
particular reference to the Athenian empire, it is
probable that he would occupy a different place
from that which he holds actually in the world's
esteem ; he would have forestalled the fame of
Machiavelli. . .

Thucydides simply observes facts ; Machiavelli
lays down maxims and prescribes methods ; but the '^(^*-*^
whole innuendo of the Thucydidean treatment of n^-

history agrees with the fundamental postulate of
Machiavelli, the supremacy of reason_of state. ^__
To maintain a state, said the Florentine thinker,
"a statesman is often compelled to act against
faith, humanity, and religion." In Thucydides, ,
^easQUjof _atatfi_appearsL_a&_actually the. sovran guide \ ]
ta^tiifcjCQnd.uct of_afl^irs. .>Biit the essential point ,i
ofcoTjaparisQiL-is-that both historians, in exgimnmg "^
history and politics, jabstracted from_allJbut political
considerations, and applied logic to this restricted
^eld. Machiavelli — the true Machiavelli, not the
Machiavelli of fable, the scelerum inventor UUxes

\J

144 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

— entertained an ideal : Italy for the Italians, Italy
freed from the stranger : and in the service of this^
ideal he desired to see his speculative science of
politics applied. Thucydides had no political aim
in view ; he was purely a historian ; his interest
was to investigate the actual policy of Athens in
[-maintaining and losing her empire. Butjt^jatas
part of the method of both alike to eliminate
conventional sentiment and moralitoj^

A certain use of the term aperri by Thucydides
has an interest in this connexion. It is sometimes
said that he did not assign great importance to the
action and role of individuals! TKis^ seems to me
a mistake, due to the circumstance that he does
not draw personal portraits in the manner of sub-
sequent historians. For it is evident that he
considered the brains and wisdom of him whom he
calls *' the first man " as largely responsible for the
success of Athenian policy before the Pelopon-
nesian war. We can read between the lines that
in his view the Peisistratids, Themistocles, and
Alcibiades were also forces which counted for a
great deal. The pre-eminent significance of the
individual was a tenet of INIachiavelli and his con-
temporaries (a classical feature of the Renaissance) ;
it was a prince, an individual brain and will, to
which he looked for the deliverance and regenera-
tion of Italy. Both writers conceived the individual,
as a political fe£torj_pin[ely.iiiCHuJthe intellectual
side. Now Thucydides has used aperrj in his notice
of the oligarch Antiphon, to express the intelli-

IV THUCYDIDES 145

gence, dexterity, and will-power of a competent
statesman, in sharp contradistinction to the con-
ventional ap€T7] of the popular conception. The
only appropriate equivalent by which we can
render in a modern language this Thucydidean
dperi] is a key -word of Machiavelli's system, virtii,
a quality possessed by men like Francesco Sforza
and Cesare Borgia.^

It must be understood that tMs attitude of;
XJiucy^lides only concerns .. international politics,
the subject of his work. Domestic politics lie,
except incidentally, outside his scope. When he
turns aside to describe the disintegrating influence
of party faction on the internal conditions of
Greek states, he recognises the important opera-
tion of ethical beliefs and religious sanctions in
holding a society together. But where national
aims are at stake and international rivalries are in
motion, no corresponding beliefs and sanctions
appear, possessing the same indefeasible value for
the success and prosperity of a state. There is
irony in his remark that the Lacedaemonians, after
the first war had come to an end, ascribed their
own want of success to the fact that they had
refused the Athenian proposition to submit the
Peloponnesian grievances to arbitration, in accord-
ance with the Thirty Years' Peace. It is note-
worthy that in the Funeral Oration of Pericles,

^ Since writing this paragraph, I observe that Murray had already
compared this dper'^ to virtit (in his chapter on Thucydides, History of
Greek Literature).

L

146 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

where he pourtrays the qualities of his countrymen,
there is not a single word about those conventional
virtues in which Nicias shone. The Athenians are
y praised for their political intelligence and versa-
tility, for their adventurous activity, for enlight-
ened freedom in their intercourse with strangers,
and for other excellent things. Not a word is said
of their piety, and they were certainly pious. We
are told that they have accomplished much and
reached the heights by their own talents and their
own toil. There is not a word, not a single per-
functory phrase, of assistance or favour from
heaven. Of religion, or of morality in the con-
ventional sense, there is not a syllable from the
beginning to the end of this brilUant speech.
Pericles could hardly have-aioided_^LJeast.,Sfime
"^^^^tionJ^reference tojhe gods,m 1^^
he^_actuany_deliYfii£dljt-JM^ sepulture •, ,t.hat. -j
Thucydides overlooked Jtjsjignificant.

IfnEhiripp^ciaHo^ of the historian is sympa-
thetic, I hope you will not suppose that I belong
to the band of devotees who make a cult of Thucy-
dides and can see no defects in their idol. Such
devotees existed in ancient as well as in modern
times, and the historian's ancient indiscriminating
J .admirers received a very proper rebuke from
/ I Dionysius of Halicamassus. I have already
x^ ' sugg;ested JhaJJae-iiarned-hisa^^
)^ I and_omissigntoiL.far. His treatment of individuals

' / ! displays a more serious limitation in his idea of
'^ 1 historical reconstruction. Thucydides does not

IV THUCYDIDES 147

seem to have grasped fully that in estimating jhe
a^tiQn_^of__arL-ifldiyidual in histojn[__his_ wfeole
character must, be taken into accQimt ; he is a -^
psychical unity, and it is not possible to detach
and isolate certain qualities. Psychological recon-
struction is one of the most important as well as
delicate problems which encounter the historian,
and Thucydides failed to realise all that it means.
In his impatience of biographical trivialities, he
went to the extreme of neglecting, Mography alto-
^ther. Take, for instance, his silence concerning
the personality of Pericles. This statesman was
one of the forces which operated in bringing about
the war, and to understand his actions we want to
know more about his personality. Thucydides is
content to note his consummate political ability
and his indifference to money, and to indicate his
idealism. This does not enable us to realise what
manner of man Pericles was ; we still feel, and '
modern criticism illustrates this, that he is in many
respects an unknown or at least ambiguous quantity.

The wor^ '^f T'K.ir»yri;riQo Yfr,a limitations which *^
we must beware of underrating ; but it marks the /
longest and most decisive step that has ever been ^
taken by a sinp;le man towards making history P
what it is to-day. Out of the twilight) in ^faich
Herodotus still moved wondering, he burst^nto
the sunlight where facts are hard, not_to_w5[flder
biit to^miderstanc}^ With the Greeks historical
study never acquired the scientific character which
it was reserved for the nineteenth century to

148 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

impress upon it. But within the limits of the task
he attempted Thucydides was a master in the craft
of investigating contemporary events, and it may
be doubted whether within those limits the nine-
teenth century would have much to teach him. If
he had admitted his readers into the secrets of his
workshop, if he had more clearly displayed his raw
material and shown how he arrived at his conclu-
sion, if he had argued and discussed, he might have
exercised a greater influence than he did on the
methods of subsequent Greek historians. His in-
complete work, posthumously published, had an "l
immediate and far-reaching result in establishing 1
political history ; and in the next lecture we shall
see how men of the younger generation received a j I
stimulus from him. But, although the value and
greatness of his work were at once recognised,
and he always remained the one and undisputed
authority on the period he had treated, yet, for
several centuries after his immediate successors,
his history seems to have been little read except
by scholars ; he was a great name, not a living
influence as a teacher or a model. His style, with
its ** old-fashioned and wilful beauty,"^ repelled, and
other ideals of history, sharply opposed to his,
came into fashion. It was not till the first century
B.C., with the return to Attic models, that the
interest in his work revived ; and from that time
we can trace his influence on leading writers ^ down

^ 6lPX0-'Ck(>v re koL aCOades KdWos, Dionysius, Tepl <rvv9. 6v. 165.
^ Dexippus and Procopius are instances.

IV THUCYDIDES 149

to one of the latest Byzantine historians, Crito-
bulus. But this influence was of a superficial kind ;
it concerned style and phraseology ; it was generally
a mere mechanical imitation.^ And the historians
whom he would himself have most esteemed were
not those who came under his own influence.

^ The servile imitation of Thucydides is ridiculed in Lucian's wus Sei

IffTopiav ffvyy p6.<j)uv ;

LECTURE V

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK HISTORIOGRAPHY
AFTER THUCYDIDES

§ 1. The generation after Thucydides

Thucydides had set up a new standard and
proposed a new model for historical investigation.
He taught the Greeks to write contemporary
political history ; this was the permanent result
\ of his work. But the secret of his critical methods
may be said to have perished with him ; it has
been reserved for modern students fully to appre-
ciate his critical acumen, and to estimate the
immense labours which underlay the construction
of his history but are carefully concealed like the
foundation stones of a building. Influences came
into play in the fourth century which drove history
along other paths than those which he marked out ;
the best of the principles which his work had
inculcated did not become canonical ; and his
historical treatment was not sympathetic under
the new intellectual constellations.
ju^ The age succeeding his death was perhaps not
\ favourable to the composition of political history.^

^ This is an observation of von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff.

'-}

LECT.v XENOPHON 151

The engrossing intellectual interest was then
political science, and the historical method had
not been invented. The men who might other-
wise have shone as historians were engaged in
speculations on the nature of the state. They
were eagerly seeking an answer to the speculative
question : What is the best constitution ? Only
three historians of note arose in this period ; they
were more or less under the influence of Thucy
dides, but at long intervals behind.

Of these the only name famiUar to posterity is
Xenophon, who was probably the least meritoriou^
of the three. To the circumstance that he is one
of the very few classical Greek historians whose
work has survived, he owes a prominence to which
his qualities do not entitle him.^ In history as in
philosophy he was a dilettante ; he was as far
from understanding the methods of Thucydides as
he was from apprehending the ideas of Socrates.
He had a happy literary talent, and his multifarious
writings, taken together, render him an interest-
ing figure in Greek literature. But his mind
was essentially mediocre, incapable of penetrating
beneath the surface of things. If he had lived
in modern days, he would have been a high-
class journalist and pamphleteer ; he would have ^
.made his fortune as a war-correspondent ; and

* The preservation of his works is due to the overestimate which was
formed of him under the Atticistic revival ; he was canonized by literary
judges, with Thucydides and Herodotus. Cp. Lucian, ircDs Set 4, "Every-
body wants to be a Thucydides, a Herodotus or a Xenophon " (Gou/cuStSat
icai 'Hp65oTot koI ^evotJHovTei).

152 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

would have written the Hfe of some mediocre
hero of the stamp of Agesilaus. So far as
history is concerned, his true vocation was to
write memoirs. The Anabasis is a memoir, and
it is the most successful of his works. It has the
defects which memoirs usually have, but it has
the merits, the freshness, the human interest of
a personal document. The adventures of the Ten
Thousand are alive for ever in Xenophon's pages.

He took up the story of the Peloponnesian war
where Thucydides had left it, and he carried down
the history of Greece from that date to the fall
of the Theban supremacy, in the work which we
know as the Hellenica. By this work his powers
as a historian must be judged. Some of its
characteristics are due to the superficial lessons
which the author learned from the founder ofi
political history. In the first portion of the book^
he employed strictly the annalistic plan of Thucy-
dides. He adopted the device of introducing
speeches, and the objective method of allowing the
actors to reveal themselves in their acts and words.
He does not himself pourtray their characters, as he
pourtrays Cyrus and the generals in the Anabasis.
But he never goes down below the surface of
events ; he never analyses the deeper motives ; and
he writes with little disguise of his own predilections.
His history is an apotheosis of Agesilaus ; he does
not conceal his strong philo-Laconian leanings or
his hatred of Thebes ; he pointedly ignores Epami-

1 B. i. and B. ii. to iii. 10,

V XENOPHON 153

nondas. His ideas about historical happenings were
those of the average, conventional Athenian ; and
he ascribes the fall of the Spartan supremacy to
divine nemesis, avenging the treacherous occupa-
tion of the Theban citadel. He cannot resist the
commonplace attraction of commonplace moralis-
ing ; he tells anecdotes which his austere prede-
cessor would have disdained; but he has learned
from Thucydides to keep to the matter in hand.

Other works of Xenophon had more influence
than the Hellenica, on subsequent historiography ;
or, as it would probably be safer to say, reflected an
interest which was to become not only permanent
in literature but a conspicuous feature in history.
I am referring to biography. Interest, deliberate
and serious interest, in individual personalities, had
been awakened by the sophistic illumination ; and
Euripides probably did as much as any single man
to heighten and deepen it. A new branch of
literature, biography, emerged ; and the word ^to?,
life, acquired a new meaning, charged with the
whole contents of a man's actions and character.
Biography was founded by Isocrates and the pupils
of Socrates. The earliest biography we possess is
the Evagoras of Isocrates, and it is to this model
that we owe the second, the Agesilaus of Xeno-
phon. In other works of Isocrates also there are
biographical sketches, and perhaps the portraits in
the Anabasis were due to his influence.^ We can

1 They remind us of the character-portraits of the dead Argive leaders
in the Suppliants of Euripides (861 sqq.).

154 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

see too that the original personality of Socrates,
which made a deep impression on his disciples, was
effective in helping to establish this kind of litera-
ture ; most of them used their pens ; and the
incidental portraiture of Plato, and the Memoirs
of Xenophon, which are not a Life, have their
significance for the rise of biography. I have not
to follow its further development or to show how
it was stimulated by the Peripatetic school/
As a literary art ancient biography reached its
highest perfection in Plutarch's gallery of great
men. That series is invaluable to us, because the
author consulted many books which are now lost ;
but he was not a historian ; his interest was ethical.
What we are here concerned to note is that,
after Xenophon and Isocrates, historians generally
considered sketches of character and biographical
facts to be part of their business. It was a feature
which was flagrantly liable to abuse, and often
led to irrelevancies, which would have shocked
Thucydides. But although, in practice, ancient
character-portraits tended to be conventional and
uninstructive, it was in principle an important
advance to recognise that the analysis of character
and personality has historical value, and cannot
be confined within the limits which Thucydides
had allowed.

The continuation of Thucydides was taken up
by another writer who seems to have had a truer

^ For these remarks on the rise of biography I have used F. Leo's
admirable work Die griechisch-romische Biographie (1901).

T CRATIPPUS 155

calling than Xenophon to exercise the historian's
trade. Cratippus was one of the obscurest figures
in literature, and till a few months ago we had not
even a fragment to indicate the character of his
work. But a passage of Plutarch might suggest
that his history possessed more than ordinary-
merit. "If there were no men of action," Plutarch
observes,^ " there would be no historians. Abolish
Pericles, Phormio, Nicias, and the rest, and you
eliminate Thucydides. Abolish Alcibiades, Thra-
sybulus, and Conon, and you abolish Cratippus."
Here Cratippus is singled out as the leading
historian of Athens for the years subsequent to the
termination of Thucydides, and as one whose loss
would be acknowledged to be an impoverishment
of historical literature. The passage also leads us
to infer that Cratippus carried his continuation as
far as the naval victory of Cnidus, 394 b.c., which
enabled Athens to win back an independent and
eminent position in the Greek world. Egypt,
which has yielded so many invaluable relics of
classical literature to the indefatigable explorations
of the eminent Oxford scholars, Grenfell and
Hunt, has recently enriched us with a treasure,
which, I have little doubt, is a portion of the
work of Cratippus. This substantial fragment
covers a part of the year 396 b.c. and most of the
year 395, so that it may represent more than
a twentieth part of the whole history. Some
eminent scholars claim for it the authorship of

^ De Glor. Athen. ad iuit. (ed. Bernardakis, ii. p. 455),

156 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Theopompus ; but the weight of evidence, in my
opinion, is entirely against that theory ; while
there is nothing inconsistent with the authorship
of Cratippus (the only other admissible claimant ^),
which was advocated by Blass. As no relics of
the work of Cratippus have been preserved in
literature, we have no direct positive evidence for
the identification. The case rests (1) on the argu-
ment by exclusion ; the claims made for other
candidates cannot be reconciled with the character
of the fragment ; (2) on the circumstance that
the few things we know about Cratippus corre-
spond to the indications of the new text. The
narrative bears the stamp of an original composition
by a contemporary (like that of Thucydides, and

^ The only other; for the claim put forward for AndrotionbyG.de Sanctis
(see Bibliography) is obviously out of court. It is enough to say here
that the narrative of the campaigns of Agesilaus could not possibly have
appeared in Androtion's Attic history. — The case against Theopompus,
who is considered to be the author by Wilamowitz-MollendorfF and
E. Meyer, has been stated impartially by Grenfell and Hunt, who,
however, incline to this theory, and has been forcibly presented by
De Sanctis. I will not go over the arguments which they have put so
well. But I would emphasize that the few positive indications of contact
between the papyrus and fragments of Theopompus may be otherwise
accounted for (as Theopompus would naturally have used Cratippus) ;
that what we know about the life of Theopompus, unsatisfactory as it is,
renders it highly unlikely that he wrote his Uellenica before 350 b.c. ; and
that the hypothesis — to which the advocates of his authorship are forced
to resort — that the Hellenica was entirely different in the style of treat-
ment from the Philippica, is contradicted by a passage of Porphyrins
(Eusebius, Praep. evang. x. 3, cited by De Sanctis in his tract, p. 9) and
by the way in which Dionysius (in his appreciation in the Letter to
Pompeiu^, 6) associates both works closely together and describes the
character of his " historiography " without the faintest suggestion that
the earlier work presented a radical contrast to the later. [Since the
above was written, papers have appeared by W. A. Goligher, in the
English Historical Review, April 1908, and W. Rhys Roberts, in the
Classical Review, Jime 1908, arguing against the Theopompus theory.]

V CRATIPPUS 157

even more so than Xenophon's Hellenica), not
compiled from books. We can see that it was
written witliout knowledge of Xenophon's work.
The lower limit of its date can hardly be later
than about 350 b.c.^ Now Cratippus, we know,
was a younger contemporary of Thucydides,^ and
his literary activity must have been subsequent
to the death of Thucydides {c. 396 b.c.) whose
work he continued ; so that chronology as well as
subject accords with the hypothesis of his author-
ship. There are no speeches, and one of the
things we know about Cratippus is that he
disapproved of the speeches in Thucydides and
considered the absence of them in the last Book
a proof that Thucydides had come to regard them
as undesirable.^ The narrative is lucid and simple,
unadorned by rhetorical phrases and free from
.didactic commonplaces. It is also extremely dull ;
ibut it would be illegitimate to judge from this
[particular section that the work as a whole could
[not have evoked the praise implied by Plutarch.
^If nothing were left to us of Thucydides but,
^say, the last thirty chapters of the third Book,
I with the tedious account of the Acarnanian opera-
\ tions of Demosthenes, what a dull writer we should
esteem him. We can see that the author was not
given to passing personal criticisms ; no hard words
j are said of any one ; a slight approbation is accorded
to an act of Conon ; and one much -mutilated

1 E. M. Walker thinks it was written before the end of the Pho-
cian war.

^ Dionysius, De Thucydide, 16, » lb.

158 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

passage contains apparently a characteristic of a
statesman, whose identity can hardly be deter-
mined/ This evidence does not enable us to
decide whether Cratippus adopted the objective
method of Thucydides in regard to the personalities
of the historical actors. But in other matters at
least he condescended to his readers. He explains
the relations and actions of political parties ; he
traces the growth of anti-Spartan feeling in Greece;
and of the constitution of Boeotia he gives as clear
an account as could be desired in a handbook, an
account which shows us that we were ignorant of its
real nature. The general impression I gain from
the fragment is that if the work had survived
it would occupy a distinctly higher place than the
Hellenica of Xenophon, though the author did
not possess Xenophon's technical knowledge of
warfare.

The discovery of Grenfell and Hunt has added
to our knowledge of facts, but for our present
purpose its interest lies in showing on what lines
the writing of contemporary history, founded by
Thucydides, might have developed in the hands
of men, not endowed with his brain-power and
originality, but competent and diligent, if it had
not been diverted from an independent path by
forces which I will presently notice.

^ The passage, on which nothing persuasive has been suggested, is in
col. X., where oii yap wavep o[i(?)7rX«crrot tQi' dv]vaiTTev6vTU)v and dri[/Mo]TiK(i)T
are the slight clues. Could it possibly be Dionysius of Syracuse ? That
Sparta was interested in some of his proceedings described by Diodorus,
xiv. 7. 8, might conceivably have led to a mention of him here and a
digression on his policy.

V PHILISTUS 159

The influence of Thucydides was probably more
marked in another contemporary historian, who
moved in another part of the world and had a
different horizon, Philistus of Syracuse. Like
Thucydides, he had experience of public affairs,
and suffered exile, and lived to be recalled. He
did not confine himself to contemporary history,
as Thucydides did, for he related the story of
Sicily from the very beginning down to the time
of his own youth — he had been an eye-witness
of the Athenian expedition. But his more impor-
tant work was the history of the two tyrants
Dionysius, father and son, a record of events in
which he had himself played an active part both
as politician and military commander. He enjoyed
the posthumous distinction of being the only
historian whose works followed Alexander, along
with the great poets, to Further Asia, and, as
Freeman says, " the reason of the choice is plain
enough. Nowhere could Alexander find reading
more to his taste than in the history of Dionysius,
the first man who carried on war on a scale and
after a fashion at all approaching to his own."^
Philistus made Thucydides his model,^ not by a
slavish imitation of his style, but rather in temper
and method, and we may suspect that of all
Greek historians he was most Thucydidean. He

* History of Sicily, iii. 63.

2 Dionysius, wepl fit/jL-Zjaeus, 426 (Usener and Radermacher, p. 208) ;
Cicero, De Oral. ii. 13. The diflFerences in style between Thucydides
and Philistus are explained by Dionysius, Letter to Pompey, 5. The
style of Philistus was tediously uniform.

160 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

is thus appraised by Cicero, who, though he lived
in a day when other styles of history were in
fashion, had a keen literary sense. "Philistus,"
he writes to his brother Quintus, who was engaged
in reading the Sicilian author, is "a writer of
the first rank, pithy, sagacious, concise, almost
a miniature Thucydides." ^ Cicero's portrait sug-
gests that Philistus displayed Thucydidean qualities
beyond conciseness and the faculty of keeping
strictly to the point ; and this we know from
other evidence. The court of the old fox {veterator)
Dionysius the Elder, of whom he was an intimate
confidant before his disgrace, was a school of
statecraft and political casuistry, in which the
imitator of Thucydides could well learn to study
political phenomena from the non-moral attitude]
of his exemplar. But the mere fact that Philistus
undertook to write in detail the early history oi
Sicily raises a presumption that he was less]
sceptical than the Athenian ; and as a matter oi
fact he did not disdain to record wonders and
omens, such as the appearance of a swarm of bees
alighting on the mane of a horse, which was taken
to presignify the reign of Dionysius.^

§ 2. The iiifluence of rhetoric

During the period in which these three his-
torians, Philistus, Cratippus, and Xenophon, wrote,

* " Capitalis creber acutus brevis paene pusillus Thucydides " : ad Q.

fr. ii. 11. I give the renderings of Tyrrell and Purser, vol. ii. ed. 2, p. 136.

2 Cicero, JDiv. 1. 33=fr. 48. Cp. fr. 5T.

V ISOCRATES 161

the educated Greek world was succumbinor to the
spell of two influences, towards which Thucydides
had been detached and independent. I refer to
rhetoric and philosophy. You are all familiar with
the immense influence which Isocrates exerted on
literature and education. He was not a man of
genius, yet at no age, perhaps, can we find a single
man who in this sphere held such a magisterial ^
position. Greeks from every part of the world
repaired to his school at Athens, and his rules for
style were canonical. I need not illustrate this,
but will go on to show how he affected the develop-
ment of historiography and especially through two
eminent admirers, Ephorus and Theopompus.

And first of all I may point out how the
political view of which Isocrates was the most
conspicuous exponent affected history. The rise
of Macedon in the middle of the fourth century,
and the gradual fulfilment of the aspiration for
the union of Greece, under Macedonian direction,
brought to the front what was virtually a new
conception of Hellenic history. Hitherto, history
had been either sectional, the histories of particular
states or groups, or had been concerned with
particular episodes, such as the joint efforts of the
Greek states against the Persian or inter-Hellenic
wars. But the idea of Greek unity preached by
Isocrates, and taking the special form of unity under
Macedonian leadership against Persia, reacted upon
history, and no fewer than three works were
written in the days of Philip and Alexander,

M

162 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

which were inspired by the idea of the unity of
Greek history. Two of them have vanished,
leaving not a trace except the mere record of
their existence. One was by Zoilus, whose name
is better remembered for his carping criticisms
of Homer which earned him the nickname of
Homer o-mastix. Homer's scourge.^ The other was
by his pupil Anaximenes, who was one of the
teachers of Alexander. Both these historians were
. submerged in oblivion by the success of the third,
^ Ephorus of Cyme. He is said to have been a
pupil of Isocrates, but I do not think that this is
established.^ The work to which he devoted his
life, beginning with the mythical origins of Greece
and embracing the barbarian peoples with which
the Greeks came into contact, was probably
intended to terminate with the year 334, when
Alexander crossed into Asia, but only reached
as far as 356, in consequence of the author's
death. It became and remained one of the
standard works of antiquity, and established what
has been aptly described as ** the vulgate of Greek
history." It is usual to designate this book, which,
although it has perished, is inwoven in the narra-
tives of our later authorities, so that we know a
good deal about it indirectly, as the first universal
history ; and so it is described by Polybius. But
it is important to discriminate the precise sense in
which we can admit this description. We must

^ His work came down to Philip's death.
' Cp. Schwartz, art. " Ephoros," in Pauly-Wissowa.

V EPHORUS 163

always remember that the Greeks had never
formed a nation ; they were never united even
in an all-embracing federation ; they had no
national history in the proper sense of the word.
The bond of community among them was the
general homogeneity or unity of their civilisation.
Now the novelty of the work of Ephorus lay in
this, that, recognising this unity of culture which
contained potentialities of a real Hellenic nation,
he brought together the particular histories of all
Greek-speaking communities, and thus produced
what might be called a quasi -national history.
But it was distinctly a history of Greece, Hellenica^
not a history of the world; non- Greek peoples
only came in so far as they were connected with
Greek history ; and the title " universal " can be
applied, not on the ground that the author, like
Herodotus, comprised portions of non-Greek his-
tory, but in the limited sense that all the Greeks
were embraced. To some extent the chronicles
of Hellanicus had been an anticipation of this
idea of Ephorus and his contemporaries.

It became the fashion at this time to divide
large works into books. The history of Ephorus
consisted of twenty-nine Books, of which each was
a unity in itself and had a preface of its own.^
Thus it was not constructed on the annalistic

^ A thirtieth Book was added by the author's son, coming down to the
siege of Perinthus, 340-339 b.c. The treatment must have been consider-
ably more summary than in the work of Ephorus himself, whose last ten
Books seem to have covered not more than thirty-four years (since 390 b.c.
was treated in Book xix.). See Schwartz, oj). cit. pp. 5, 6.

164 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

method. The author seems to have had a wide
acquamtance with the whole range of historical
and geographical literature, and he did not copy
uncritically. He was fully conscious of the value
of first-hand information, and we may note his
acute observation, wondering how far he applied
it, that in the history of modern times the most
detailed accounts are the most credible, but for
ancient history those who profess to know most
particulars are the least worthy of belief. His
critical principles led him formally to throw over

^^---^ the purely mythical period and begin with the
return of the Heracleidae ; but he did not carry
out consistently this counsel of wisdom ; in the
course of his narrative he introduced myths and
indulged in the crude methods of rationalising
which had been initiated by the lonians.

I cannot enter into a detailed account of the
work of Ephorus, and must be content just to
mention characteristics for which the influence of
Isocrates is responsible. Among them may be
noticed the interruption of the narrative by moral-
ising platitudes ; the introduction of elaborate
Isocratean speeches, even when an army was
facing the enemy ; and the passion for panegyrics.
These features, and his conventional battle-scenes,
which conformed more or less to a model scheme,
manifest the same tendency to sacrifice truth toMl

X effect. History is becoming epideictic, like ora-VI
tory and poetry, and desires to show off. And this **
is what is meant by saying that historiography was

i

V THEOPOMPUS 165

drawn under the pernicious influence of rhetoric. ^
One does not mean by that, the cultivation of
a clear, agreeable, and rhythmical style ; one means
the tendency to seek first of all and almost at any
cost what may be called rhetorical effects.

The other famous historian of the Isocratean
school, Theopompus, continued the work of Thucy-
dides in his Hellenica^ which covered the same
period as Cratippus and for which he must have
derived his material mainly from older works, such
as those of Cratippus himself and Xenophon.
His more important effort was the Philippica, a
history of Greek affairs in the time of Philip, and
here he was in the full sense an original contem-
porary writer.^ He, too, was affected by the
^ national idea of Isocrates ; he saw in the Mace- .

onian power a unifying principle, and he made
^t the pivot of his contemporary history. But it

notable that he called that history, not Mace-
[donica, but Philippica. It was a new thing to
treat a period as " the age of Philip."

He was probably the most interesting historian
}oi the fourth century. But some have even
pronounced him truly great, worthy to rank near
Thucydides. The evidence is sufficient to disprove
such a claim.^ The Isocratean features which were
common to him with Ephorus are decisive. And
if we observe that he was more concerned with

^ This work (which was not puWished before 324 b.c, cp. frags. 108,
334) consisted of fifty-eight Books.

^ See Wachsmuth, Einleitung, 537 sqq.

166 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

the private morality of men of action than with
their political or military capacity, that he served
up miracles and fables, and related a figment of his
own invention concerning the imaginary land of
Merope beyond the ocean, where the golden age
is still a reality,^ we may see that any comparison
with Thucydides is almost ludicrously inappro-
priate. He seems to have been a man of restless
vanity, endowed with what we might call an epi-
deictic temper. While Ephorus devoted his life
to study without personal ambition, Theopompus
travelled about, eager to cut a figure in the world,
like Gorgias and others of the early sophists. He
had a "temper," revealed in his writings and
infusing a spice, which was lacking in the flavour-
less works of Ephorus and Cratippus. He was
a psychological analyst, and he was more inclined
to be censorious than panegyrical. The critic
Dionysius says that his great aim was to dive
into the profundities of the human soul and
discover the secret wickedness almost invariably
lurking beneath the semblance of virtue.^

In judging these new tendencies to which
history succumbed under the Isocratean regime, we
must bear in mind that they responded to the taste
of the public which Isocrates did much to educate.
In old days Homer and the epic poets satisfied the

^ He said expressly that in myths he would outdo Herodotus, Ctesias,
and oi TO. 'IvdiKo, (rvyypd\//avTes. Strabo, i. 2. 35.

^ Letter to Pompey, 6, 7. "I suppose," adds Dionysius, "that the
mythical judges in Hades conduct their trials of the dead with the
punctual severity of Theopompus. "

V EPHORUS AND THEOPOMPUS 167

requirements of a large public. Herodotus similarly-
appealed to public taste and public interest. Thucy- '^
dides had a different object in view. He formed
a standard of historical truth, and deliberately'/
renounced the idea of making his book a popular
success. We may conjecture with high prob-
ability that the works of his successors Cratippus
and Philistus had a very small and select circle of
readers. Ephorus and Theopompus determined to
win the public ear. It was not enough to write ;
they wanted to be read. From this point of view
they represented a reversion to the days before
Thucydides. But they had a different audience to
please from that which listened to Herodotus, and
they captured votes by accommodating history to
the rhetorical effects for which the public cared.
This was a natural instinct of self-preservation.
At all events, the craving for the achievement of
popular success dominated historiography hence-
forward ; the exceptions to the rule are few.

Under Isocrates, Athens had been the educa-
tional and literary centre of Greece. The primacy
passed away from her in the greater Greece created
through the conquests of Alexander ; she was no
longer the arbitress of taste or the leader of intel-
lectual fashion. In the field of history, Timaeus of
Tauromenium illustrates the transition from Attic
to Hellenistic literature. He lived through vast
political changes. Born two years before Chaeronea,
he survived the outbreak of the First Punic war.
Driven from Sicily by Agathocles for political

1G8 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

reasons in his youth, he found a new home at
Athens, where he devoted the rest of liis long life ^
to a history of Sicily and Italy. He not only
ransacked literature, but travelled for the purpose
of his work, sparing neither time nor money to
gain accurate information about the ill -known
western nations, Iberians, Celts, and Ligurians.
He made a special investigation of chronology, and
was the first to introduce into Greek historio-
graphy the clumsy, inconvenient method of
reckoning time by the Olympiac years. His work
(in thirty-three Books) came down to 320 B.C., but
he continued it in a history of Agathocles, and in
a later book which reached to 204 B.C. and in-
cluded the campaigns of Pyrrhus. Timaeus was
not only used extensively by subsequent historians,
especially by Diodorus, but his history was recog-
nised as an authoritative storehouse of information
by the scholars and poets of Alexandria, such as
ApoUonius, Lycophron, Callimachus, and Erato-
sthenes. The material furnished by this means has
enabled GefFcken to restore the general construc-
tion of the first two Books of his chief work, deal-
ing with the mythical history and geography of
Sicily and Italy. For us his merit lies in his in-
dustrious collection of ethnographical facts and
local legends, material which is still of value ; but
this merit would never have sufficed to secure him
the popularity and authority which he enjoyed for
many generations after his death, if his history had

^ 3!()--i,J{i H.c. ; exiled 317 B.C.

V TIMAEUS 169

not possessed other features which we should mark
as his weak points. When he came to Athens he
studied rhetoric under a pupil of Isocrates, and his
work had characteristics which we expect from the
Isocratean school, such as speeches packed with
commonplaces, and the conventional administration
of praise and blame. He had also weaknesses of
his own. He was a thorough pedant, without
sense of proportion or the faculty to discriminate
weighty from trivial things ; interested in discon-
nected details ; fond of fables and marvels. He
was also something of a mystic. He sought to
show, for instance, that to every sinner punish-
fment, unmistakable as such, was meted out, and
that coincidences of date had a transcendent signi-
ficance ; he was ever on the watch for the revelation
of mysterious or daemonic influences in historical
jvents. Again, his history of the contemporary period
lust have been far from impartial. His extra va-
"gant admiration of Timoleon was the counterpart
of his failure to recognise any but the worst qualities
of Agathocles, whom he hated on account of his
own banishment, which had embittered his mind.

Living in the Attic atmosphere and trained in
Isocratean rhetoric, we should expect to find Timaeus
conforming to the canons of Attic style. But it
appears that he adopted a new kind of writing
which bade farewell to the traditions of Attic taste.
It is impossible to decide whether he struck out
this new way for himself, or came under the
influence of Hegesias of Magnesia, who is always

170 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

designated as the founder of the famous school of
style which came to be known as the Asianic. As
we do not know the precise dates of the life of
Hegesias, we cannot say whether he and Timaeus
were independent of each other. The literary
parentage of this new style is to be sought in the
prose of the elder sophists, like Gorgias and Alci-
damas ; but it outdid anything that Gorgias in his
most frigid moments had been tempted to essay.
It produces the impression of a bacchic revel of
rhythms and verbal effects. This Asianic move-
ment triumphed ; the general public lost the power
of appreciating Attic measure and Attic sanity;
and the new style was predominant for two
hundred years. Nor did it disappear when the
reaction came and Attic models again came into
fashion. On the contrary, as Norden has shown,
the two styles, the archaic and the modern, con-
tended for mastery throughout the ages of the
Roman Empire. For instance, in the fourth
century a.d. we have a great archaic rhetorician,
Libanius, thrilling Antioch with his eloquence,
while a great modern sophist, Himerius, was teach-
ing the art of style at Athens.

Of the modern style, in its early or Asianic
period, we have very few specimens, but we know
that it comprised two distinct kinds — the pretty
style and the bombastic style. The bombastic
suited the taste of grandiose Hellenistic princes,
and it so happens that the one considerable example
we possess of it is a long inscription of Antiochus

T HEGESIAS m

of Commagene (discovered in 1890), in which the
King describes his achievements. It is, as Norden
says, a prose dithyramb. But the other, the pretty
style, was the more popular and more important ;
it was the style in which Timaeus experimented
and which Hegesias established. It is not easy to
reproduce the effect of this style in a modern
language, because it depends so much on rhythm ;
but in order to show the sort of thing you would
find in the most popular works of the lost litera-
ture of the third and second centuries B.C., I will
quote a passage of Hegesias, who wrote a history
of Alexander the Great. The historian makes the
following comment, shall I call it ? or dirge, on that
monarch's destruction of Thebes : ^

In rasing to earth Thebes, O Alexander,

Thine hand a deed has done.

Such as Zeus would do

Were he to east the moon utterly

Out from yon heaven's section ;

For the sun as a fitting symbol I keep for Athens.

Verily these cities twain were visual orbs of Hellas ;

So that now for the one of the pair in pain I travail.

^ Fr. 2 (ed, Miiller, Scr. rer. Alexandri Magni, p. 140) :

Sfioiov irewoirjKat ' AXi^avBpe
G'JJiSas Acaracr/cd^aj,
us b.v el 6 Zeiis

iK TTJS KCLT OVpavbv fM€plSoS
iK^dXoi T7]V (Te\-f)VT)V.

rbv yap -SjXiov viroXelirofiai rals 'A.d'^vau.

dtjo yap aOrai rrdXeis

T^s 'EWdSos •^(rac 6\p€is.

8i6 Kal irepl rrjs eripas dyuipiu vvv.

6 fi^v ykp eh avrSiv d<pdaXfjMi rj Qrj^alwv

iKKiKOwrai iriXty.

See the rhythmical analysis in Norden, Griechische Kunatprosa, i. 136.

172 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

For Hellas hath lost half her vision, one eye knocked out.
Even the Theban town.

This means in plain language : Athens and
Thebes are in Greece what the sun and moon are
in the sky ; or they may be likened to the two
eyes of Greece, and Alexander in destroying
Thebes has deprived Greece of one eye. I have
made an attempt to imitate the rhythm, though it
is indeed impossible to catch the effect in another
language, or perhaps to appreciate it even in the
Greek. But the example will illustrate the
poetical character of the Asianic style. Is not
this passage what one might look for in the
chorus of a third-rate historical tragedy ?

The popularity which Timaeus enjoyed for a
couple of centuries mirrors the public taste, and he
would hardly have enjoyed it if he had adhered to
the canons of Attic style, which drew a sharp line
between poetry and prose. But there was another
school of historical art bidding for public favour in
the days of Timaeus. It was initiated by Duris
of Samos, a pupil of Theophrastus. He became,
through some stroke of luck, tyrant of Samos, and
he wrote a history of Greece from 370 b.c. to 281,
a biography of Agathocles, and a chronicle of his
native city. He declared war on what I may call
the conventional school of Ephorus and Theo-
pompus, asserting that these writers failed to excite
the pleasure which history, differently treated, is
capable of affording. They lacked, he said,
mimesis. Mimesis is the nearest Greek equivalent

V DURIS 178

of " realism " ; and we shall not be far from the
mark if we say that what Duris demanded was
realism, and if we call his school the realistic
school. Duris was intensely interested m the
theatre; he wrote books on tragedy and the
history of art ; and it was this interest in drama
that inspired him with the idea that historians
should aim at producing the same kinds of effect
as dramatists. He required, for instance, that
they should introduce their personages dressed in
the costumes appropriate to the time and circum-
stances. But his chief point of insistence was that
the feelings of the readers should be moved and
harrowed by highly wrought pathetic scenes, con-
jured up by the writer's imagination ; while they
were also to be entertained by anecdotes and
gossip and amorous stories. He achieved a success
with the public, and naturally his success was
followed up by others. For example, Phylarchus,
who wrote an important history of the years 272-
220 B.C., is blamed by Poly bins as "feminine"
because he aimed at moving his readers to tears.^
That was the influence of Duris.

There was a good deal to be said for the instinct
of Duris in his reaction against conventionalism.
The power of realising and vividly describing scenes
of the past is a high merit in a historical writer, y
provided he has the material necessary for con- '
structing a true picture. But this proviso is

^ We must remember that Polybius was disposed to be unfavourable to
Phylarchus as a partisan of Cleomenes.

174 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

sure to be overlooked when the writer's first con-
sideration is not truth, but effect. And so it was
with Duris. His school, like the conventionalists,
subordinated history in the Thucydidean sense to
literary art. The conventionalists appealed to
taste, the realists appealed also to the emotions.
The former edified, the latter excited. But for both
alike history was simply a branch of rhetoric.

We may regret this corruption, as we call it, of
history. But it is more to the purpose to under-
stand the Greek point of view. It is not easy
for us to realise the importance which the art of
rhetoric possessed for the Greeks, as a purveyor of
aesthetic pleasure. Indeed, the history of Greek
rhetoric testifies, perhaps as impressively as the
history of Greek plastic, to the large part which
aesthetic pleasure played in Greek life. For the
later Greeks, the declamations of rhetoricians,
which we find intolerably tedious to read, had
intense an aesthetic value as the Homeric poe
for their remote ancestors, and were listened
with as eagerly attentive and as critical ears,
People went to hear a rhetorical display just as we
go to hear a symphony. And this interest lasted
down to late Graeco-Roman times. Greek pro
was always an art in as full a sense as the poet
from which it sprang, regulated by principles an
canons, which have no counterpart in modern
languages, even in French, and required prolonged
study and practice. And rhetoric came to fulfil
for Greek audiences the same role which had been

ed 1

i

V HISTORY AS LIGHT READING 175

once fulfilled by the epics. Just as the historians, or
as we should say mythologers, of the Homeric age
were epic poets, so the later historians were rhetori-
cians. If the historian were not trained in the school
of the rhetorician he would have had few readers.

Again, history and geography were the great
field from which light reading was provided for the
educated public. The later historians helped to
satisfy the same need of entertainment which had
formerly been met by the tales of the epic poets
or the historical anecdotes of the sixth and fifth
centuries. There was no special literature yet of
romances and novels, and the functions of our
modern novelists were to a great extent fulfilled by
the historians. History had to answer the purpose
now answered by fiction, and it is not surprising if
it tended to partake of the nature of fiction.

The knowledge of strange lands won by the
conquests of Alexander the Great stimulated the
appetite for marvels and provided abundant food.
It was not necessary to imagine, as Theopom-
pus did, a land of Merope ; there was now an
actual background and there were actual adven-
tures ; history could appear without excuse as
romance, and romance could mask as history.
The sober and veracious relations of Alexander's
achievements, the political Memoir of Aristobulus
and the military Memoir of Ptolemy, fell dead ;
and four centuries elapsed before the excellent
Arrian composed the first history of the Mace-
donian hero's conquests that was based on these

176 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lyxttT'

and some other trustworthy sources,^ with a
rigorous rejection of the Uterature which was
written 7rpo<; 6^\ov koI Oiarpov, not only, I am afraid,
as we say " for the gallery," but for the stalls too.
The great popular success was won by Cleitarchus,
a rhetor of Colophon,^ who made the most of the
possibilities of his theme and captured his public by
fantastic descriptions of the gorgeous East. This
quasi-historical work became the standard book on
the subject, and seems to have exerted a deep
influence on the traditional history of Alexander.

But while such romances captivated the public,
those plain veracious reports of Ptolemy, Aristo-
bulus, and Nearchus have an important place in
the development of historiography. They founded
a new branch of historical literature,^ which in the
next generations was represented by the Memoirs
of Pyrrhus and of Aratus, to be succeeded in Roman
days by the Commentaries of Julius Caesar, the
Memoirs of Corbulo, and Trajan's history of his
Dacian wars. The Commentaries of Caesar ful-
filled indeed, in a most subtle way, the function
of political pamphlets, but the plain businesslike,
unadorned relation has its literary parentage in the
memoirs of the generals of Alexander. And it is

^ Especially the work of Nearchus on his voyage in the Indian
Ocean.

2 He wrote about the end of the fourth century. From the criticisms
of Longinus and Demetrius, it appears that his style was marked by
features which heralded the Asianic school.

2 We may indeed compare parts of Xenophon's Anabasis. And the
work of Nearchus may remind us of the report which Scylax made for
Darius.

V HIERONYMUS 177

not, I think, unreasonable to conjecture that these
memoirs were the model or inspiration of an excep-
tional work of this period, which fulfilled, as it
would appear, the demands which Thucydides
made on historiography. Hieronymus of Cardia,
a soldier and statesman, who had served under
Eumenes and Antigonus Gonatas, wrote a history
of the Diadochi and Epigoni from the death of
Alexander to about 266 b.c. His sole concern
seems to have been to record facts accurately ; he
used official despatches, and in general he told only
what he knew of his own knowledge or from
credible information. But his style was careless ;
he disdained rhetoric. The Greeks would not read
what did not gratify their aesthetic sense ; and a
work like that of Hieronymus had no more chance
in competition with Duris than the Memoir of
Ptolemy against the sensational and rhetorical
story of Cleitarchus. Speculating on what we
casually learn about this lost book, we may
suppose that if it had survived we should regard
Hieronymus as a third in a triumvirate of Greek
historians, along with Thucydides and Polybius.

We saw in the first lectures how the Persian
conquest of Asia Minor and invasion of Greece
played a determining part in the rise of history.
Similarly, the Greek conquest of the Persian
empire had a decisive influence on its develop-
ment. I have pointed out some of the ways in
which this second great stimulus from the Orient
operated. Just as it was in consequence of

N

178 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

the destruction of Miletus and the Persian war
that the intellectual primacy in Greece passed
from Ionia to Athens, so it was a consequence of
the expansion of Hellas by Alexander that the
primacy passed away from Athens to Alexandria
and other places — passed back, we might say, to
the East ; and this affected history as well as other _,
branches of literature. Again, the opening up of the
distant countries of Asia stimulated and ministerec
to the romantic history which gratified the popular
appetite for sensation. On the other hand, the
reports and " blue-books " of Alexander's general
founded a new kind of history which eschewec
rhetoric, addressed no appeal to the public, and had
very few exponents. Another result of Alexander's
work was the rise of the idea of the oecumene^ — the
realisation of the inhabited world as a whole of
which account must be taken. ^ This idea had
indeed no immediate influence on history. We
can trace its influence in the Stoic philosophy, and
it gave rise to the conception of the Romans that
their dominion was potentially conterminous with
the orhis terrarum. As a historical principle, it
then began to become effective, as we can see in
the universal histories of the first century b.c., and
it prepared the way for the Christian conception,
of world-history.

^ Compare J. Kaerst, Die antike Idee der Oekumene in ihrer poUtiaclwn\
wnd kuUurellen Bedeutung, 1903.

T POLITICAL LITERATURE 179

§ 3. The influence of philosophy and the rise
of antiquarianism

I have traced the influence of rhetoric on
history ; we must now consider the influence of
philosophy. In the first half of the fourth century,
a period of intense practical, as well as theoretical,
interest in problems of government and social
organization, we find, beside Isocrates the sophist,
who wrote for the hour, Plato the philosopher,
who wrote for the ages. Different as they were,
they both represented from different sides the same
interest in political speculation, and both alike gave
it an ethical direction, the effects of which were
permanent. Both these masters, the man of genius
and the man of talent — the programmes of the one
and the ideals of the other — set historical tasks
to the next generation. While Isocrates set in
motion Theopompus, Ephorus, and Androtion, the
greatest pupil of Plato found it necessary, in
investigating political philosophy, to trace the his-
tories of the political constitutions of Hellenic states.

We should understand many points in the
political speculation of Plato as well as in the
poHtical pamphlets of Isocrates if we possessed
the mass of political literature which inundated
Athens during the period of the Peloponnesian
war. Of that Uterature we have one early speci-
men in the anonymous book on the Athenian
Constitution. We have only a few fragments of the
publications of Antiphon,Thrasymachus,and Critias,

180 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

the most distinguished names. Some papyrus frag-
ments of the Apologia of Antiphon have been pub-
lished the other day by Nicole, but, welcome though
they are, they do not amount to very much.^

It has been happily observed by Wilamowitz *
that these political pamphlets, of which the book
of Stesimbrotus was one of the first, were the
prose successors of the Elegies of Solon and
Theognis. The most effective and important
flysheets emanated from the men who were dis-
satisfied with the democracy and desired to substi-
tute oligarchy or polity ; they were dealing with
burning questions and they did not spare persons. J
The book of Stesimbrotus, which seems to have
been entitled Concernmg Themistocles, Thiicydides,
and Pericles, had struck the personal note. The
Athenian history of the fifth century was per-
verted by these writers into a history of dema-
gogues ; and this perversion had a decisive influence*
on Athenian thinkers of the following century. j
The pupils of Socrates were only too ready to'
adopt a view which held up to obloquy the
democracy which had taken the life of their
master. We have the scheme of the Atheniaiij
demagogues in Plato's Gorgias, in the Politikos of
Antisthenes, in the Dialogues of Aeschines, in the]
Philippika of Theopompus, in the Athenian Con-*
stitution of Aristotle. It was somewhat as if the

^ L'ApoIoffie d^ Antiphon, ou \6yoi irepl /Meraa-rdaeus, 1907 (Geneva-Bale).

^ The same scholar has made it probable that one portion of the
Panegyric of Isocrates was aimed against the pamphlet of an Ionian who
(c. 404 B.C.) wrote against the Athenian supremacy and in favour of
Sparta.

V POLITICAL LITERATURE 181

sources of the American history of the nineteenth
century were lost, and a reactionary pubUcist
wrote a book to make out that a series of dema-
gogic Presidents was the key to the history of
I the United States.

This literature, contemporary with Thucydides,

tmust have had a considerable effect in creatinsf an

'interest in Athenian history. It corrupted history,

but it also quickened it. It was the object, for

instance, of Theramenes and his followers to prove

that polity, the form of government which they

desired, was not an innovation but the true and

[original Athenian constitution, the Trarpto? ttoXl-

,^ and that the existing democracy was a

)erversion which had been generated and fostered

the interests of demagogues. The historical

[question, what was the nature of the irdrpco^

iroXiTeia and the Solonian reform, thus became a

question of burning political interest. We may

illustrate it by the controversies, not yet extinct,

as to the nature of the Reformation in England,

between Church parties which, in the interests of

^ To the literature on this subject belong the <rvnPov\evTiK6s of Thrasy-
machus (411 b.c.) ; the pamphlet from which Aristotle derived much material
for his 'A^. it. ; then, later (403 b.c.), Lysias, irepl roD /jltj KaroKOffai rrfv Trdrpiov
TciKiTeiav 'X6-f}V7)(n. [The puzzle of the wtpl iroKiTelas, vulgarly ascribed to
Herodes Atticus, has been discussed in a minute and careful study by
E. Drerup, 1908 {Studien zur Oeschichte und Kultur des Altertums, ii. 1,
Paderborn). His solution is very interesting. From a variety of indica-
tions he concludes that it was written in the summer of 404 b.c. by an
Athenian belonging to the party of Theramenes, and is a political
pamphlet concerning the Athenian politics of the hour, Thessaly, the
nominal subject, being merely a disguise. So an Irish patriot might put
a plea for Home Rule in the mouth of a Bohemian. If Drerup is right,
his further inference that the "speech" of Thrasymachus iirip Aapi-
caluv was a brochure of the same sort seems probable.]

182 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

their own ecclesiastical views, place different
interpretations upon historical events.

Aristotle's Constitution of Athens may itself be
regarded from one point of view as belonging to
the political literature of the fourth century. To
describe it as a pamphlet ^ is as absurd as it would
be so to describe the work of Herodotus. Its
main purpose was scientific ; but the author was
deeply interested in the politics of the day, and his
book had an intentional bearing on the contem-
porary situation.^ It was due to his own views as
a politician, and not to his curiosity as a historian,
that he used as authorities flysheet Hterature,
especially a polemical pamphlet dating from the
last years of the fifth century and expressing the
anti- democratic conception of Athenian history
which prevailed in the circle of Theramenes.

But the Constitution of Athens is only one of
158 Greek constitutions and some not Greek,
which were compiled by Aristotle or under his
direction. Their purpose was to supply actual
material for a scientific study of political pheno-
mena. And thus Aristotle possesses the great
significance that he was the founder of constitu-
tional history, the precursor of Waitz and Stubbs.
The Constitution of Athens, the only one of the
collection we possess, was the one most likely to
be affected by Aristotle's political prejudices. Its
weaknesses are evident. It consists of two parts-
a sketch of the constitutional changes to the enc

^ As Nissen has done. * Compare Bauer, p. 274.

V ARISTOTLE 188

of the fifth century, and a description of the exist-
ing constitution. His main thread in the former
was the local history of Athens as described by Attic
chroniclers who came after Hellanicus •/ just as his
main guides for other states were probably the local
histories which had been industriously consulted by
Ephorus. So far, so good ; and he also displayed
historical instinct in using the poems of Solon for
his account of the economic conditions of that
statesman's time. But he completely neglected
the material on which a modern historian would
base his investigation, the stones and the archives.
And it is clear that he did not comprehend the
working of the constitution in the fifth century ;
his critical faculty did not resist the spell of the
polemical literature of the extraordinarily clever
publicists who had invented their own version of
Attic history. When he has recorded the over-
throw of the Council of the Areopagus, instead of
pointing out that the actual power and government
were in the hands of the Council of Five Hundred,
he intimates that the conduct of the state rested
entirely with Pericles. The truth is that Aristotle

^ One of the important results of the discovery of the 'Adrivaluv JIoTu-
rela is the hght gained for the lost historians of Athens who stood on the
shoulders of Hellanicus, and who formed a principal source of Aristotle.
It is notable that some at least of these chroniclers were religious
exegitai tQv irarpluv, who are the nearest analogy at Athens to the
pontifices of Rome. Cp. Wilamowitz, Aristoteles und Athen, i. 280 sqq.
We know the names of Cleidemus, Melanthins, Phanodemus (? Anti-
cleides) ; Androtion is more than a name. The series was continued by
Demon and closed by Philochorus, an exegetes, the last and greatest,
whose work eclipsed its predecessors. The recovery of Philochorus
would mean a greater addition to our historical knowledge than the
'M-qvaiuv HoXirda. Some new fragments are contained in the Commen-
tary of Didymus on the Philippics of Demosthenes.

184 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

seems to have reflected very little on the subject,]
or rather to have confined his reflexions within veryj
narrowly drawn lines. The formalism of his con-«
ception is most evident in the way in which he
treats, or fails to treat, the Athenian empire. To
a modern student, who should undertake to write
a constitutional history of Athens, one of the most
important problems would be to examine how the
democracy governed the empire and how the
empire reacted on it. Aristotle dismisses the
empire in about four lines (c. 24). Moreover,
although he has traced the constitutional changes
in relation to the political crises which brought
them about, he has, in general, his eye merely on
the dead machinery ; he tells us the names of the
parts, but he does not show how the machine
worked. Even when we come to the democracy
of the fourth century, we get only a full account
of the official organization and the formal pro-
cedure ; no effort is made to gain an insight into
the political efficiency of the institutions. It is
doubtful whether even here he consulted the laws
themselves, or rather used an analysis written by
somebody else.^ And if in this historical treatise
he fails to show the actual working of the consti-
tution and to explain the unwritten Staatsrecht,
his scientific treatise, the Politics^ does not supply
this want.

Plato troubled himself little with history, but
it is not improbable that one of his speculations

^ See Wilamowitz, op. cit. i. c. 7.

V PLATO 185

suggested the idea of the first history of civiHsa-
tion. In the Laws, where he descends to lower
heights, nearer to the actual conditions of terres-
trial society, Plato has sketched a reconstruction
of the development of the human race. It is
governed by the idea of cataclysms, such as
deluges or pestilences which wiped out the human
race, leaving only a remnant, which had to begin
at the very beginning and weave civilisation, like
the web of Penelope, all over again. The latest of
these periodic cataclysms was a deluge, and the
few survivors who had gained safety on the tops
of high hills found themselves without the means
of travelling and without arts ; the metals had
disappeared and there were no means of felling
timber. " The desolation of these primitive men
would create in them a feeling of affection and
friendship towards one another ; and they would
have no occasion to fight for their subsistence ; for
they would have a pasture in abundance " ; also
abundance of clothing, bedding, and dwellings, and
utensils ; so that they were not very poor. And
they were not rich, as there was no gold or silver.
But "the community which has neither poverty
nor riches will always have the noblest principles ;
there is no insolence or injustice, nor, again, are
there any contentions or envyings among them." ^
Plato draws here the picture of an age which is
ethically golden ; although he does not use the

^ Laws, 678-9, transl. Jowett. The cycle of degenerate states in
Republic viii. is a sequence in thought, not in time.

186 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

expression. He then sketches the patriarchal
government of primitive societies, appealing to
Homer's description of the Cyclopes ; the rise of
agriculture and of city -life; the beginnings of
legislation which became necessary when men who
had different laws in their separate life came to live
together. He shows how this gathering into large
communities suspended patriarchal rule and brought
about a monarchical or aristocratic government.

Up to this point we suppose that we are reviewing
the general development of mankind throughout
the whole earth. Then suddenly, by a sort of
legerdemain, the philosopher changes this universal
scene to the plain of Troy, and continues the
imaginary record from the foundation of Ilion. The
rest is a curious commentary on the history of
Greece. It turns on the idea that the Heracleidae
missed a great opportunity. The object of the J
Dorian institutions which they introduced was,
Plato alleges, to protect the entire Hellenic race
against the barbarians, and, if they had only legis- ,
lated with more far-sighted wisdom, they mighMf
have secured a permanent union or confederacy of 1
the Hellenic world, strong to resist all assaults of
the barbarians. As history, this is absurd ; the
interest lies in Plato's reflexion of the nation
Hellenic idea which was preached by Isocrat
Nor indeed does Plato intend it to be taken moi
literally than the previous imaginary reconstru
tion of the progress of man from his primev
conditions.

V DICAEARCHUS 187

This slight sketch, which represents the primitive
age as ethically golden, but materially rudimentary,
must, I fancy, have been present to the mind of
Dicaearchus when he decided to compose the
earliest Culturgeschichte or history of general civil-
isation, his Bto9 'EWaSo? in which, starting from
conditions like those indicated by Plato, he traced
the progress of Greece in pubUc and private insti-
tutions and in the arts. It is remarkable how the
speculations of the Greeks on primitive civilisation
were bounded by that tradition of a decline from a
golden age, which Hesiod expressed in his scheme
of the Five Ages.

But if Dicaearchus found his text in Plato, his
work was a characteristic product of the Peripatetic
school to which he belonged. It was the merit of
that school to promote specialism,- and it produced
a considerable historical hterature on all kinds of
special subjects, such as the history of philosophy,
the history of drama, the biographies of sculptors.
Demetrius of Phaleron played an active part in
establishing in the Greek world the Peripatetic idea
of collecting and classifying facts of every order.
For it was largely due to his stimulus and influence,
after he retired from Athens to Egypt, that under
the auspices of Ptolemy I. books were collected at
Alexandria which formed the nufcleus of the two
great libraries formally founded by Ptolemy 11.^
Political history indeed was not much written by
the savants of Alexandria, whose great achievements

1 Susemihl, i. 6.

188 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

were in the sphere of philology ; but the antiquarian
tastes which found their fullest satisfaction there,
and afterwards at Pergamon also, in the shadow of
large libraries, were introduced by the Peripatetic
movement, and did not fail to affect historio-
graphy. We can notice this influence in the work
of Timaeus, who, though he was thoroughly incap-
able of philosophical ideas and made scurrilous
attacks on Aristotle, shared with the Aristotelian
school the passion for collecting facts of all kinds,
and was so trivial in its indulgence that he was
called an " old rag woman " (ypaoa-vWeKrpLa).
\ The creation of antiquarian study is one of the
numerous precious services of the Greeks to the
progress of human culture. Its distinction is that,
apparently and in its immediate aspect, it is dis-
interested. The Greeks described it as iroXvirpay
/xoavvT], attending to what is not one's business, a
singularly felicitous phrase for a sphere which has
no relation to human life. The Roman word for
antiquarianism had a similar significance : curiositas,
superfluous care for what is practically unimportant,
or, in fact, the love of useless knowledge. But
although curiositas came to be an instinct in men
who could not have assigned any reason of utility
for their pursuits, it must be remembered that it
sprang from a certain side of the general philoso-
phical theory of Aristotle, and, thus having a place
in a system, had originally a justification outside
itself. It may be called useless in a narrow sense
of the term, but from another point of view, as I

V ANTIQUARIANISM 189

will show in a subsequent lecture, it has a human
value and is therefore ultimately not disinterested.

Although the ancient antiquarians tended to be
rather learned than critical, and in criticism to be
rather minute and finical than luminous, there were
brilliant exceptions ; such as Eratosthenes, the
greatest and most original geographer of the ancient
world. His studies in physical science helped him
to prosecute his antiquarian researches with fresh-
ness of insight. I would, in particular, point out
his attitude to Homer. One of the most serious
impediments blocking the way to a scientific
examination of early Greece was the orthodox
belief in Homer's omniscience and infallibility — a
belief which survived the attacks of Ionian philoso-
phers and the irony of Thucydides. Eratosthenes
boldly asserted the principle that the critic in study-
ing Homer must remember that the poet's know-
ledge was limited by the conditions of his age, which
was a comparatively ignorant age.^ This was an
important step in historical criticism.

Ancient antiquarians did not work out principles
of method, nor did they, beyond the collection of
libraries, provide facilities for research, like the
bibliographies and innumerable works of reference
which are compiled for the convenience of modern
students. It is somewhat surprising that archives
were not systematically transcribed, and official
documents collected. The idea was not unknown.
Craterus, who seems to have been a contemporary

1 Strabo, vii. 3. 6 ; cp. also 1. 23-35.

V

190 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lectJ

of Theophrastus, compiled a corpus of the Attic
decrees of the fifth century, arranged in chrono-
logical order. The traveller, Polemon of Ilion, was
such a diligent copyist of inscriptions that he earned
the name of stone-rapper (stelokopas). Among the
Romans, Mucianus, the friend of the Emperor
Vespasian, collected and edited a large corpus of
official documents, probably including reports of the
proceedings of the Senate {acta senatus) during the
last age of the Republic.^ As this collection included
reports of public speeches by leading orators and
statesmen, the motive of Mucianus in compiling it
may have been an interest in oratory rather than in
history. Such labours were in any case exceptional.
Greece did not create scientific philology any
more than scientific history. But the moveme
set on foot by the Peripatetic school was invaluabl
both for preserving the records, and exploring t
recesses, of the past ; and however uncritical
crude the methods of ancient antiquarians may
appear to us, they represent a prominent stage in
the advance of knowledge. But while their dii
interested passion for research affected the reco
struction of past history, contemporary histo
was composed by men who subordinated truth
rhetorical effect. There were few exceptions, co:
spicuously Hieronymus, whom I have mention
and Polybius, to whom the next lecture will
devoted.

1 Tacitus, Dial. 37.

LECTURE VI

POLYBIUS

The life of Polybius covered about the first eighty
years of the second century b.c. {c. 198-117 b.c.) —
the period of the great political process which linked
together the destinies of Greece and Rome. He
was bom in the Hellenistic world, a noble repre-
sentative of its civilisation, to become the herald
of the new Graeco-Roman world into which he
witnessed the Hellenistic system passing. You
will remember that having played a public part in
the politics of the Achaean League of which his
father Lycortas was then the leading statesman,
and having served as a commander of cavalry, he
had been taken with other hostages, after the
battle of Pydna (168 B.C.), to Rome, where he
was placed in the house of the victorious general
Aemilius PauUus. There he enjoyed the intimate
society of Scipio^Aeniilianus, and had exceptionally
good opportunities of gaining a first-hand know-
ledge of Roman affairs and of studying the char-
acter of the governing class and the working of the
coi^stitution. There he became reconciled to the
fate of his country. He lived sixteen years at

191

192 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Rome before he was allowed to return to Greece,
and during that time he conceived the idea of his
work and wrote a considerable part of it (at least
fifteen Books). His original design was to relate
the history of the advance of Roman conquest,
through a period of fifty-three years from the eve
of the Second Punic war (220 B.C.) to the Roman
conquest of Macedonia (168 B.C.). He explains
very fully why he chose his starting-point. There
broke out almost at the same moment three
great conflicts : the war of Rome with Carthage,
the war of the Leagues in Greece (in which the
Achaeans and Philip were ranged against the
Aetolians), and the war in the East between
Antiochus and Ptolemy Philopator. Up to that
epoch, events happening in the various quarters
of the world were unconnected and did not bear
upon each other either in their purposes or in their
issues. But from this time Italian and African
affairs begin to come into relation with Asiatic
and Greek affairs, and history begins to assume
the form, not of strewn disiecta membra, but of a
single organic body {a-QjfiaroetBi] ^).

But, while Poly hi us marks this date as the
proper beginning of his work, he goes back farther
in a long introduction, filling two Books, in which
he sketches the earlier history of the relations of
Rome with Carthage, including the First Punic j

^ i. 3. 4. This unity does not become clear till after the defeat of
Carthage ; but the Eastern events during the Second Punic war went to
determine the subsequent intervention of Rome.

VI POLYBIUS 193

war and the previous history of the Achaean
League. Thus, so far as the lands of the Western
Mediterranean are concerned, his history began
where Timaeus had left off, as he expressly notes.^

He signalises the motif of his work in imposing
phrases. *' Our own times have witnessed a
miracle, and it consists in this. Fortune moved
almost all the affairs of the world towards one
quarter and constrained all things to tend to one
and the same goal. And so it is the special note
of my work to bring under one purview for my
readers the means and the manipulations which
fortune employed for this end. This idea was
my principal motive and stimulus. It was an
additional reason that in our time no one had
attempted a universal history."^

Subsequent events, the fall of Carthage and the
annexation of Greece in 146 b.c., led Polybius to
extend his plan and fix this later year as the term
of his history. In its augmented form it reached
the considerable bulk of forty Books, of which
only the first five have been preserved completely,
though of many of the others we possess long
excerpts. He seems to have finished the com-
position of the whole work about the year 134,
but he continued to insert many additions and
corrections up to 120 b.c. These supplements are
often in contradiction with other passages, for he
died without submitting the book to a systematic
revision. Indeed, he had allowed the original

» i. 5. 1. " i. 4. 1.

O

A

194 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS le

introduction, which expounded the first scheme
of his history, to remain unchanged, and simply-
inserted a statement of his revised plan.^ Of the
later additions the most interesting are those
which were suggested by the author's visit to
Spain about 133 b.c.,^ and those which allude to
the revolutionary movement of the GracchL
Of the latter I shall .have something more to
say.

I have observed that the history of Polybius '
follows on to that of Timaeus, and it is to be
noted that in his chronological arrangement he
has adopted the awkward reckoning by Olympiads
which Timaeus introduced, but he supplements it
by the years of the Roman Consuls and other
marks of time.^ In the first portion of his work,
up to the year of Cannae (216 b.c.), he pursues
continuously the history of each of the various
states without interruption ; but after that, he
adopts the annalistic method and synchronizes
events in different parts of the world under the
same year.

^ Old plan i. 1-5 and iii. 1-3 ; new plan iii. 4-6.

^ It has been shown that in his description of New Carthage Polybius
was in error as to the orientation. After he had seen the place he
inserted (x. 11. 4) a correction of current statements as to the circum-
ference, but left the other errors uncorrected. See Cunz, Polybius, 8 sqq.,
and Strachan Davidson, Selections, Appendix.

^ The beginning of the Polybian year, however, did not coincide with
that of the Olympiad (July), but fell some three months later (c. Oct 1).
This division seems to have been determined by the fact that the autumn
equinox and the beginnings of the official years of the Achaean and
Aetolian stratSffoi fell about the same time. See Nissen, Rheinisches
Museum, 26. 241 sqq. He calls attention to a passage, xii. 11. 1,
which suggests that Timaeus may have been partly responsible for this
system.

VI POLYBIUS 195

The arrangement of his immense work displays
conspicuous skill ; but whether the forty Books can
be reduced to the scheme of a symmetrically
grouped work of art, like the history of Herodotus,
is a question which we can hardly answer with
confidence, considering that of many of the Books
we possess only a few fragments. Nissen has
attempted the discovery of a symmetrical plan.^
He holds that it was divided into seven parts,
each of which contained six Books, except one
which contained four. These groups, he thinks,
correspond to definite stages in the development
of Roman dominion : " The first group," he says,
" contains the introduction ; the second the cul-
minating years of the contest between Rome and
Carthage ; the third begins with the war in Africa,
and ends with the destruction of the Macedonian
hegemony ; the fourth traces the history of the
Roman hegemony, and the fifth its transformation
into an empire of client states ; the sixth (which
is the exceptionally small division) forms the tran-
sition to the last rising of the Mediterranean states
against Rome, which is the subject of the seventh."
In support of this design, he points out that three
Books which are devoted to long digressions — vi.
on Roman Institutions, xii. on the work of
Timaeus, xxxiv. on Geography — come each at
the end of one of these main divisions. Moreover,
the addition of a fortieth Book, containing a resume
of the contents, is urged as an argument in favour

^ i. op. cit. The theory is favourably entertained by Susemihl, ii. 125.

1

196 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

of the alleged construction, on the ground that it
was required to complete the last hexad. The
theory has a certain plausibility, but we have to
remember that Polybius changed and enlarged his
plan in the course of its composition, and I find
it difficult to believe that, if he had deliberately
adopted a definite scheme of this kind, he would
have failed to draw attention to it in the preface
to his first or third Book. His solicitude that the
reader should fully grasp his plan and arrange-
ment is hardly reconcilable with his silence on such I
a leading point. The symmetry is not clearly
convincing as in the case of Herodotus.

But whether this incomplete symmetry is due
to the design of the author or only to the discern-
ment of an ingenious reader, Polybius has shown
a fine artistic sense of propriety in fixing the place
which he chose for his account of the institutions
of Rome. The third Book concludes with the
defeat of Cannae, which set the mistress of Italy
face to face with the prospect of the extinction of
her power. How was it that, brought to bay, she
baffled the triumphant invader, recovered Italy,
and , conquered Carthage ? The historian empha-
sizes the problem. Of course, the measures her
government adopted after the disaster were wise.
But a sagacious policy at the last moment would
not have availed if Rome had not been what she
was. 'The explanation lay, Polybius believed, in her
institutions. And so he interrupts the narrative
of the Punic war at this point to describe the

i

VI POLYBIUS 19T

institutions which saved Rome.^ He has seized

(the instant at which the reader's interest is most
fully prepared and awake to learn the lessons
which those institutions have to give.
' Polybius is not less express than Thucydides
in asserting the principle that accurate representa-
tion of facts was the fundamental duty of the
historian. [He lays down that three things are
requisite for performing such a task as his : the
study and criticism of sources ; autopsy, that is,
personal knowledge of lands and places ; and
thirdly, political experience. He was himself a
man of action, and had acquired political and
military experience before he became a historian,
so that he fulfilled the third condition ; and he
was most conscientious in endeavouring to satisfy
the two other self-imposed requirements. DHe pos-
sessed a wide acquaintance with historical litera-
ture, and criticized the authorities whom he used
with fearless independence of judgment?^ He was
not taken in by "authority," and he declined to
render unreserved credit to a writer on the ground
that he was a contemporary or a man of character.
For instance, he criticizes the views of the Roman
historian Fabius on the causes of the Punic war.
" There are some," he observes,^ " who think that
because he lived at the time and was a i Roman
senator he should be believed without more ado.
Whereas I consider his authority high, but not

^ In Book VI. The intervening Books iv. and v. deal with synchronous
events in Greece. See iii. 118. ^ iii. 9.

198 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIxVNS lect.

absolute or such as to dispense the reader fiom
forming his own judgment on the facts them-
selves."

Polybius was also a traveller, and he travelled
for the purpose of historical investigation in
accordance with his belief that topographical
autopsy was a primary qualification for writing
history. He passes severe criticisms on Timaeus,
who, he says, always " lived in one place," and on
Zeno of Rhodes, for the blunders they committed
through ignorance of geography. He was in-
timately acquainted with Greece itself ; ^ his de-
scription of the battle of Sellasia was censured
by Delbriick, but has been successfully defended
by Kromayer. He travelled in Italy and Sicily ;
he visited Africa in an official capacity ; he went
with Scipio to Spain, and explored the coast of
the Atlantic, returning to Italy by Southern Gaul
and the Alps.

The historians of whom Polybius seems to have
most highly approved were Ephorus and Aratus.
The ^lemoirs of the Achaean statesman naturally
appealed to him as an Achaean politician, but also
because they satisfied his doctrine that history is
a practical and not an antiquarian study. AVritten
by a man of action, whose interests were directly
practical, they gave the kind of instruction which
it was the main function of history, in the esteem
of Polybius, to give. On tlie other hand, Ephorus

^ Tliere is indeed, in xvi. 16. a, a curious statement as to the position

of M\"cenae relative to Corinth.

VI POLYBIUS 199

appealed to him as a universal historian, " the first
and only writer who undertook to write universal j
history."^ Thus Aratus and Ephorus displayed
severally the two great features of the work of
Polybius, on which he constantly insists. His
view_of history^ is jpragmatical and it is universal.
The word pragmatical {TrpayfiariKO'i) has been some-
times misunderstood. By a pragmatical man he
means a practical poUtician, jand by pragmatical
history he means history which bears on political
actualities and furnishes practical instruction?) In
an interesting passage he says^ that this kind of
history has always been useful, but is more than
ever opportune now, " because in our times science
and art {ifiireipLa koX Tex^n) have made such great
advances that theoretical students can deal, as it
were on methodical principles, with the situations
that occur." J^He insisted very strongly on the
point that, in order to serve such pragmatical uses,
a mere narrative of events is inadequate, and the
historian must investigate and explain the causes
and the inter-connexion^ The whole value of
history, he said, lies in a knowledge of causes.
Some exponents of Polybius have applied the term
" pragmatism " to his work, in the particular sense
that he investigated the causal nexus of events.
This is a misuse of the word, and is not
countenanced by his language. "Apodeictic" is
the term which he uses of his history in so far

1 V. 33.

2 ix. 2. 5. This is one of the rare passages in which an ancient writer
betrays a sense of " progress."

200 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

as it traces causes.^ His history is pragmatical,

' and because it is pragmatical, it is also apodeictic.
Now, what does Polybius understand by causes?

r^He is careful to enlarge on the distinction between
I cause and beginning {alrU and apxv)> and he illus-
trates it by examples. For instance, while the
beginning of the Persian war of Alexander the
Great was his crossing over into Asia, the causes
are sought by Polybius as far back as the expedi-
tion of Cyrus and the wars of Agesilaus.^ But
it cannot be said that he goes very deep into the
question of historical causes. He conceives causa-
tion in an external and mechanical way, and he
does not proceed beyond the idea of simple one-
sided causation to the idea of reciprocity, or of action
and reaction, which is often required to express
adequately the relations of historical phenomena.

The view of Polybius on causation in general
is more interesting than his applications of it to
particular cases. Until he was well on in years
and had virtually completed his work, he shared
the popular belief that, apart from the regularly
operating natural and human causes, a superhuman

- power, which men call Tyche, exerts a control
over events and diverts them in unexpected ways.
This popular view had been presented in a quasi-

■ philosophical dress by Demetrius of Phaleron,
whose treatise Uepl rv^n^i ^ doubtless made a deep

^ ii. 37. 3 ; cp. iii. 1. 3. 2 ijj g.

' It is not preserved, but its general argument and contents were
transferred by Plutarch into his Consolation to ApoUonius. Consult the
work of von Scala (see Bibliography).

VI POLYBIUS 201

impression on the mind of Polybius, for its
influence on a number of passages in his work
has been proved by von Scala. The event of
167, the fall of the Macedonian monarchy, the
new step in the resistless advance of the western
world - power, in whose chariot wheels Polybius
himself and his country were caught up, might
well seem a powerful confirmation of the theories
of the wise man of Phaleron. Though Polybius
traces the causes of the success of Rome to its
history and constitution, he writes as follows in
the preface to the original plan of his work :
T" Fortune has caused the whole world and its
^history to tend towards one purpose — the empire I
of Rome. She continually exercises her power
in the lives of men and brings about many changes,
yet never before did she achieve such a labour as
she has wrought within our memory." ^ Thus the
Roman conquests produced upon Polybius the
same impression which the Macedonian conquests
had produced upon Demetrius. Elsewhere Poly-
bius quotes the very words which Demetrius had
used.^ *' Fortune, who exhibits her power in
compassing the unexpected, is even now, I think,
displaying it to the world, having made the
Macedonians the inheritors of Persian prosperity.
She has lent them these blessings, till she forms
a new resolution on their destiny." In many
other places, too, Polybius recognises the active
operation of Fortune, and comments on her

1 i. 4. 5. ' xxix. 21. 5-6.

202 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

instability, her paradoxes, her caprices, quite in
the tone of Demetrius.

But there are other passages in which Polybius
sounds a very different note. Thus he finds fault
with writers who ascribe public calamities or
private misfortunes to Fortune and Fate, and
only allows that when it is impossible or difficult
for man to discover causes, as in the case of storms
or droughts, he may in his embarrassment refer
them to God or Fortune, 7 but when you can
discover the cause of an event it is not, in my
opinion, admissible to impute it to God."^ Before
you pray for rain, it is wise to look at the barometer.
Again, he deprecates the practice of ascribing to
fortune or the gods what is due to a man's ability
and prudence. These and other similar observa-
tions are not perhaps ultimately inconsistent with
the doctrine of Demetrius, but the note is different;
they show a desire to restrict the operation of the
external power within as narrow limits as possible.
But there are other assertions which are directly
opposed to that doctrine. When he inquires into
the causes of the power and eminence attained by
the Achaeans, a people who were not numerous
and lived in a small country, "it is clear," he
says,^ " that it would be quite unsuitable to speak
of Fortune ; that is a cheap explanation ; we must
rather seek the cause. Without a cause nothing
can be brought about, whether normal or apparently
abnormal." When he wrote this, he had reached

1 xxxvL 17. 1^. 2 ii^ 38_ 5,

I

VI

POLYBIUS 203

a point of view diametrically opposed to that
which he had learned from Demetrius. Further,
he applied his new doctrine to the empire of
Rome. If, in the words which 1 quoted a few
moments ago, he had claimed Rome's successes
as a supreme illustration of the mysterious dealings
of Fortune, he now, with equal confidence, re-
pudiated the theory that Fortune had anything
to do with the making of Rome's greatness. " It
was not by fortune, as some of the Greeks think,
nor causelessly, that the Romans succeeded ; their
success was quite natural ; it was due to their
training and discipline ; they aimed at the hegemony
and government of the ^w.ftrld,. and they attained
their purpose."^

Thus it appears that Polybius, having originally
started with the conception of an extra - natural —
power, directing the world and diverting the
course of events from its natural path, was led
by wider experience of life and deeper study of
history to reduce within narrower and narrower
bounds the intervention of this deus ex machina, /-i
until he finally reached the view that it was super- —
fluous for the pragmatical historian. But it would
be rash to assert that he ultimately embraced a
theory of pure naturalism. All we can say is
that he came to entertain the view that nothing
happens without a natural cause, and the opera-
tion of Tyche or chance is, in general, an invalid ^
assumption.

» i. 63. 9.

204 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

It is probable that Stoicism had something to
do with his change of view. It is certain that
he came under the influence of the new school of
liberal Stoics, through intercourse with Panaetius,
who, like himself, was an inmate of the house of
Scipio at Rome. *' I remember," says a speaker
in Cicero's De RepuhUca,^ *' that you, Scipio, often
conversed with Panaetius in the presence of Poly-
bius, two Greeks the most deeply versed in
politics " {rerum civilium). Polybius did not \
become a Stoic, but he assimilated some Stoic
ideas, as in his earlier life he had been influenced
by the Peripatetics.

In his actual treatment and presentation of
historical events, the fluctuation in his views on
this question probably did not make much differ-
ence. A change in his views as to the freedom
of the will would have affected his treatment far
more deeply. I know for myself that on days
when I am a determinist I look on history in one
way, and on days when I am an indeterminist,
in quite another. Polybius was an indeterminist,
like most Greeks ; he believed in free-will. The
particular Stoic influences to which he submitted
did not touch this doctrine. For Panaetius di
not share the doctrine of Chrysippus and old
Stoics, that the world is governed by laws of iron
necessity which exclude free-will.

We can see the results of his contact with
Stoicism in the account which Polybius gives of

1 i. 21. 34.

VI POLYBIUS 205

the rise and fall of political constitutions.^ He
adopts the newer Stoic version of the theory of
a cyclic succession of forms of government.
When the human race is swept away (this has
happened, and may be expected to happen again)
through deluges, plagues, or famines, and a new
race takes its place, the work of civilisation has
to begin afresh ; monarchy is the first form in
which society constitutes itself; this passes
through successive corruptions and revolutions
(tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy) into
an anarchical democracy which Polybius calls
cheirocracy, the rule of might ; from which a
dissolving society can only be rescued by a return
to monarchy, and then the cycle begins again.
In the interval between two cataclysms there may
be any number of such cycles. Polybius accepts
catastrophic occurrences not as a mere ancient
tradition or philosophical speculation, but as a
proved scientific fact.^

The theory of a recurring cycle of political
constitutions which comes from Plato and the
Stoics is an application of the cyclical theory of
the world-process which was propounded by early
philosophers. Such a theory is more or less im-
plied by Anaximander and Heracleitus, but it was
clearly formulated, in very definite terms, by the
Pythagorean school.' You remember the passage
in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue where a new Argonautic

1 In Book VI. 2 vi 5 5^

^ Cp. Gomperz, Oriechische Denker, i. 46, 54, 113 sqq.

206 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

expedition is contemplated and a second Trojan
war : —

atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles.

That is the cyclical doctrine, and logically it
applied to small things as well as great. I may
illustrate it in the vivid manner of the philosopher
Eudemus. According to the Pythagorean theory,
some day I shall again with this manuscript in my
hand stand here in this hall and lecture on
Polybius, and you each and all will be sitting
there just as you are this evening ; and every-
thing else in the world will be just as it is at
this moment. In other words, the cosmical pro-
cess consists of exactly recurring cycles, in which
the minutest occurrences are punctually repeated.^
We do not remember them — if we did, they woulc
not be the same.

But the cyclical doctrine was not, perhapsj
generally taught in this extreme form.^ Polybius
does not appear at first to have held even th<
universal validity of the law of growth, bloom,'
and decay. He considered that it holds good of
simple constitutions, pure monarchy, for instance,
or pure democracy, but he thought that the setting
in of decay could be evaded by a judicious mixture
of constitutional principles. He has submitted to
a minute analysis the Spartan and the Roman
systems of government, as eminent examples of

^ It is interesting to observe that Dionysius {Uepl tQp dpxcUwv p-qrSpup, 2)
suggests periodicity as an explanation of the Attic renaissance : efre OeoO
Tivos dp^avros etre <pv<rtKTi% wepiddov rijv apxa-io-v Tdftv 6.vaKVK\o<)<rr)s.

VI POLYBIUS 207

the union of ':he three principles of monarchy,
aristocracy, anc^ democracy, compounded in such
a way that they balanced one another and mutually
counteracted the separate tendencies of each to
degenerate. The Spartans owed the idea of their
mixed constitution to the happy divination of the
genius Lycurgus, the Romans attained to theirs
through the school of experience. In other words,
the Spartan constitution was an invention, the
Roman was a growth. From these premisses,
which are largely untrue, Polybius deduced the
exceptional permanence of the institutions of
Sparta and Rome, and evidently thought that
they defied the law of degeneration. It may be
noticed that the superiority of a mixed constitution
was not a new idea.

In other passages, however, Polybius speaks in
a different tone. He sacrifices the theory that
Rome owed everything to her mixed constitution,
by admitting that her government was aristocratic
when she reached her greatness in the time of
the Second Punic war. It was a mechanical and
wholly inadequate theory, even if the facts on
which it was based had been correct — even if
Rome Jiad possessed a constitution in which the
equilibrium of the three constitutional principles
was maintained. In abandoning it Polybius was
forced to recognise that the secret of life did not
lie in a mechanical adjustment of the parts of the
state, and to admit that there was no guarantee
that Rome herself would not decline. But what

208 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

induced him to abandon it ? Undoubtedly his
observation of the revolutionary movements in
the time of the Gracchi. These movements came
as a great surprise to him ; nothing could have
seemed to enjoy a more secure stability than the
fabric of the Roman state in the days when he
began writing his book. But the Gracchan revolu-
tion opened his eyes. Its significance was brought
home to the friend of Scipio by Scipio's assassina-
tion. These stormy years flashed a lurid light
on the past, and Polybius could now look back
with illuminated vision and see in the agrarian
law of Flaminius (232 B.C.) the beginning of the
degeneration of the people.^ Without touching
what he had written before, he introduced into
his work new paragraphs which meant the sur-
render of his former belief in the permanence of
the constitution. He now recognised that Rome,
too, was destined to decline, and he could con-
sequently accept unreservedly the principle of
anacyclosis. Stoic teaching may have gradually
prepared him for this change of theory ; and
Scipio assuredly had not been blind to the signs
of the times. The revolutionary outbreak illus-
trated the melancholy prediction which he heard
from the lips of his friend on the ruined site of,
Carthasce : —

•o'

ea-aerai ^fuip orav iror oXcoXrj "IXio? iprj
Kot TipLafio^i Kol \ao<i ivfifieKia) HpiafMOCo.

I

1 ii. 21. 8.

VI POLYBIUS 209

Some time will come the day

Of doom for Troy divine and Priam's sway,

And Priam and his folk shall pass away.

More than an epitaph on Carthage, it was a
prophecy on Rome.

Both_Polybius^nd Thucydides, as I have already
observed, held with equal conviction that the first
obligation^of a historian is to discover and relate
facts as they actually occurred, and herein they
both represented a reaction against the history
which held the field. Each alike feels that the
purpose of his work is to be instructive and not
to be entertaining. Polybius is fully aware that for
the majority of the reading public his work will
have no attractions;^ it is intended for statesmen,
not for antiquarians or people who want to be
amused. Just as Thucydides is conscious that his
conception of how history should be written is
opposed to that of Herodotus, so Polybius repudi-
ates the fashion of historiography which was in
vogue, and denounces the rhetorical effects or
exciting sensations of the works which were most
popular, such as those of Timaeus and Duris. He
is severe upon Phylarchus for introducing into
history effects which are appropriate to tragedy.^
Phylarchus was always " forcing the note." He was
ever attempting to arouse the pity and sympathy
of the readers by pictures of despairing men and
dishevelled women, children and aged parents,
embracing, weeping and making loud lamentation,

1 ix. 1. 2 II 56.

p

210 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

in the extremity of woe. Tragedy and history, says
Polybius severely, have different objects. The a
of tragedy is to move the soul ; but the aim
history is to instruct the mind. Again, just
Thucydides ignores all the gossiping anecdotes
which memoir-writers like Ion and Stesimbrotus
collected, so Polybius condemns writers of a later
day for retailing what he calls the " vulgar babble
of a barber's shop " — what we should call the gossip
of the clubs, or the canards of the daily press.^

Polybius then represents a return, though not
conscious return, to the principles of Thucydid
and a reaction against some of the most conspicu
ous tendencies which had marked historiography in
the interval. But Thucydides exercised no direct in
fluence upon him, and the extant parts of his work i*
indicate that he was not one of the historians with
whom he was famiUar. Polybius has been affected
by the speculations in political science and by thc'
schools of philosophy, no less than by the changes-
in the political world which had come to pass since
the lifetime of Thucydides. Any one who turns
from one to the other is struck by the salient con-|
trasts between their methods of treatment. Thucy
dides is an artist, Polybius is a teacher. Thucydides,
as we saw, employs the objective treatment of J
a dramatist, and rarely comes forward himself to.
address directly to the reader brief criticisms o^
explanations, i^olybius on the contrary is entirely

^ iii. 20. 5 KovpeaK^s Kal iravb-qiiov XaXias. Compare his criticism on th^ ,
insinuations of Timaeus against Aristotle, xii. 8. 5-6.

!

VI POLYBIUS 211

Vubjective. He is always on the stage himself,
criticizing, expounding, emphasizing, making points,
dotting the ts and crossing the ^'s, propounding and
defending his personal views. Thucydides did all
his constructive work beforehand, and presents to
the reader only the syntheses and results. Poly-
bius takes the reader fully into his confidence, and
performs all the processes of analysis in his presence.
Thucydides states in a few sentences the plan of

I his work, indicates in a few hues his principles of
iiistoriography ; and his rare criticisms on other
historians are confined to a word or two. Polybius
devotes pages to an exposition of the scheme of his
history, at the outset, and reiterates it in another
place. At the end of his work he gave a chrono-
logical scheme of the whole plan. He had com-
menced with the intention of supplying an epitome
of contents at the beginning of each Book, but
afterwards preferred to place at the beginning of
each Olympiad a summary of the events which
occurred in it.^ He thus showed a kindly solicitude
that the reader should fully understand the con-
struction of his work. He goes, at length, into the
proper principles and methods of history, frequently
returning to the subject, and he digresses into
elaborate criticisms of other historians, such as
Timaeus and Phylarchus, Ephorus and Theo-
pompus. He is unsparingly didactic and his diffuse
explanations are often wearisome. This feature, as
to which he stands in marked contrast to the early

* The change was made after Book v. See beginning of Book xt.

;t. I

212 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

historians, may partly be set down to the influence
of popular philosophy, which tended to promote a
didactic style. We might indeed say that the history
of Polybius contains the material for a handbook
of historical method ; and this adds greatly to its
value for us.
\ Like Thucydides and the ancients in general,

\ Polybius believed in the eminent significance of the
individual in history. He reiterates the platitude
that one mind is more efficacious than a mass
of men, quoting the saying of Euripides, "One
wise plan prevails over many hands." ^ He takes
a deep interest in the characters of the men who
appear on his scene. On the other hand, he sees
that there are potent forces at work besides great
men. A student of the history of Rome, which
had won her supreme position, unsteered by single
men of transcendent powers, could not be blind
to this. Polybius recognises the importance of
national character. He considers the influence of
climate upon it, and finds a key to a nation's char-
acter in its institutions and political life. We have
seen the importance which he ascribed to the
mechanism of political constitutions. But he
had no idea of history as a continuous progress,
no eye for what we call historical tendencies, no
notion of the way in which historical changes are
brought about by the innumerable and almost
invisible activities of thousands and thousands oil
nameless people. He possessed a knowledge of the '

1 viii, 5. 3 ; i. 35. 3.

i

m

VI POLYBIUS 213

facts and conditions of his own age, and of the men
of his own age, to which we could not attain even
if we had his whole work in our hands. Yet, frag-
mentary as our knowledge is, we can say with some
confidence that we have a deeper insight than he
into the tendencies of his time, and of the time
immediately preceding, and a clearer comprehension
of the change through which the Roman state was
then passing and of the causes at work. He never
discerned how the new circumstances of Rome
in the latter half of the third century were altering
her commercial and economic condition, and were
already modifying the character of the state. We
owe our power of divining this to the enlarged
experience of the human race.

To return to his treatment of individuals.
While Thucydides leaves us to form our own
impressions from their public acts and from the
words which he makes them say, Polybius, in
accordance with his method, analyses and discusses
their qualities. But it is important to observe
that he does not, like Xenophon in the AnabasiSy
and nearly all modern historians, attempt to draw
complete portraits of Philip or Hannibal or Scipio,
or any of the leading persons of his history, but
condemns on principle such a mode of treatment.
For, he says, men are inconsistent : they constantly
act in a manner which belies and contradicts their
real nature, sometimes under the pressure of friends,
at others on account of the peculiar complexion of
the circumstances. It is therefore misleading to

214 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

characterize a man when he first appears on the
stage, or to infer his whole character from particular
acts. The right method is to criticize his actions
as they occur. ^ The same man must be praised as
well as blamed ; he is changed by vicissitudes of
affairs ; his conduct, for instance, may become
better or worse.^ Characters such as that of Philip
III. of Macedon, which seems to have specially
attracted him as a problem, impressed him with the
necessity of adopting this principle ; and in the
treatment both of Philip and of Hannibal we must
admire the conscientious fairness of Polybius in
endeavouring to understand and estimate their
characters.

Psychology indeed was a subject on which Poly-
bius seems to have reflected much. We can see
his interest in it, for example, in the account which
he gives of the mental process of learning to read ;'
in his observation that in fighting those have
an advantage who have a stronger will to conquer,
so that a battle is in a certain measure a contest
of wills ; * in his insistence on the importance of
personal experience {avroirdOeia) ; or in such a remark
as that change from one kind of activity to another
is a relief. His psychological ideas have furnished
material for a treatise to a German scholar. One
principle must specially be noticed because he
applies it to his own work : the importance of

^ On this principle he only draws general portraits of subordinate
persons who appear but once or twice. The preliminary account of Scipio|
in X, 2 is concerned only with his youth.

» xvi. 28. » X. 47. * Fr. 58.

VI POLYBIUS 215

connecting the unknown and remote with the known
and familiar. For instance, he considers it useless
to mention the names of strange places, which are
mere sound conveying no meaning, unless they are
brought into relation with the geographical know-
ledge which is familiar to the reader/ He does not
omit to make observations on the psychology of
the masses. Their chief characteristics he considers
to be ignorance and cowardice ; and therefore
religious feeling is important for them, because they
cannot endure surprises or face dangers without
hope from the gods.^ The only use of mythology
is to preserve the religion of the multitude.^ Poly-
bius does not hold that religious belief has any
value for the educated person ; it would be super-
fluous in a state consisting exclusively of wise men.
But he certainly did not underrate its importance
in actual societies. He designates religion as the
keystone of the Roman state.^

In general, it may be said that Polybius is
large-minded in his judgments and aims at scrupu-
lous fairness. While he applies ethical standards
to the conduct of pubUc men, his broad study of
human nature inclines him generally to the more
indulgent view of their acts. Perhaps no ancient
writer was more impartial in temper than he, and
the prejudices which we can detect are exceptions
to the rule. These prejudices are chiefly to be
discovered where he deals with the affairs of
Greece. Here his patriotism has unquestionably

1 V. 21 ; iii. 36. * x. 2. 10. ' xi. 12. 9. * vi. 56. 6 sqq.

216 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

coloured his account of Achaean politics, and he is
distinctly unjust to the Aetolians. The danger of
such partiality did not escape him. "A good
man," he says, " should be fond of his friends and
of his country, he must share in the hates and
affections of his friends. But when he undertakes
to write history, he must forget these attachments,
he must often bestow the highest praises on
enemies when facts require it, and, on the other
hand, censure severely his most intimate friends
when their errors demand such censure."^ Else-
where,^ in censuring two Rhodian historians (Zeno
and Antisthenes) for twisting facts to the credit of
their country, he discusses the question whether a
historian should allow himself to be influenced by
patriotic feelings. "Admitting," he says, "that
historians should lean to their countries, I deny
that they should make assertions inconsistent with
facts. We writers must unavoidably fall into
many errors through ignorance, but if we write
what is false, for our country's sake or to please
our friends or to win favour, and measure truth by
utility, we shall discredit the authority of our
works and be no better than politicians." The
indefeasible claim of historical truth cannot be
more explicitly expressed or emphatically enforced ;
and the significance of these passages lies in the
challenge which was thrown down to the prevail-
ing practice of the rhetorical school of history.
But Polybius has not absolutely adhered himself

^ i. 14. 4. 2 xvi. 14.

VI

POLYBIUS

217

to his admirable doctrine. He is disposed to make
their attitude to the Achaean League the measure
for judging other Greek states. On the other
hand, he is impartial towards Rome. Xhe justi-
fication of Roman dominion is the viotif of his
work, and the practical lesson for his fellow-Greeks
was jicquiescence in that dominion. But if he
fully recognised the great qualities of the Romans,
his Greek sympathies secured him from being
blind to their faults.

Polybius, then, stands out among the few
ancient writers who understood the meaning and
recognised the obligation of historical truth and
impartiality. Belonging to no school, he opposed
the tendencies of the current historiography of the
day. But while he protests against straining after
pathetic effects and such bids for popularity, he
shows occasionally that he possessed the art of
telling a moving tale, as in his description of
Hannibal's passage of the Alps, and he can display
powers of realism in describing an insurrection at
Alexandria or the Mercenary war of the Cartha-
ginians. But there is no attempt at striking word
pictures or purple passages ; when he is effective,
he succeeds, like Herodotus, by the simplest means.
He followed the received usage of inserting
speeches, and laid stress upon their importance.
But he held that they should reproduce the tenor
of what was actually said, and he censures Timaeus
severely for having invented orations entirely out
of his own imagination. Some of the speeches

218 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

have a Polybian flavour, but we are bound to
believe him that he had always evidence to work
upon in their construction.

He was not indifferent to style ; his care is
shown in his scrupulous avoidance of hiatus. It is
highly significant that in the Greek versions which
he made of the Latin texts of the treaties of Rome
with Carthage he neglected the rules of hiatus, the
observance of which would have embarrassed or
harmed the accuracy of the translation. He did
not, so far as we know, follow literary models. To
illustrate his diction and vocabulary we must look
not to belles lettres but to the language of official-
dom— decrees and despatches — and technical
treatises on philosophy and science. Yet he had a
wide acquaintance with literature and the classical
poets. He quotes lyric poets, Pindar and Simon-
ides, as well as Euripides. Like all educated Greeks,
he was familiar with Homer, and the fragments of
his thirty-fourth Book, which was concerned with
the geography of the West, show that he was in-
terested in Homeric criticism. The question was
debated in ancient, as well as modern, times
whether there was any real geographical back-
ground to the adventures of Odysseus. Do the
islands of the Cyclops, of Circe, of Calypso, do
Scylla and Charybdis, correspond to actual places
on the Mediterranean coasts ? Or are they " faery
lands forlorn," and is it vain to seek their names
on the traveller's chart ? Eratosthenes held that
Homer had here created a world of poetical

VI POLYBIUS 219

imagination, and that the places are as imaginary
as the people. "It is useless to look," he said,^
"for the scenes of the wanderings of Odysseus.
You will find those places when you find the man
who stitched together the bag of the winds."
Polybius did not agree with this view. He
accepted the common opinion that the poet's
geography was realistic, and did not hesitate to
identify the passage of Scylla and Charybdis with
the Straits of Messene. The work of M. Victor
B^rard has at least shown that in principle
Polybius was right.

But while rhetoric did not seduce Polybius, he /
could not escape from the philosophical and ethical
tendencies of his age. A good deal of what I have
said will have shown that he regarded the applica-
tion of moral standards and the pronouncement of
moral judgments as pertinent in history. His
ethical preoccupation is shown very clearly in his
study of political constitutions. The causes which
come into play in bringing about decay and change
are, according to his exposition, mainly ethical ; he
ignores political and economical forces. Here
he is not thinking for himself ; he is under the
sway of the speculations of philosophical schools.
Thucydides impresses us as more independent and
freer from the influence of speculative theory in
his criticism of facts. He was not imposed upon
by constitutional forms, and never ascribed to
them the significance which they possessed for

^ xxxiv. 2. 11.

220 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Polybius. Any superiorities which Polybius seems
to enjoy over Thucydides are due to the richer /
experience of two and a half eventful centuries of \
which records had been kept, to the larger stage on
which Mediterranean history had come to move,
and to the inspiration of the world-power of Rome /
pointing to a new idea of universal history.

The positive value of the historical labours of
Polybius, as a trustworthy source, can hardly be
appraised too highly. I may quote the judgment
of Mommsen, who was not attracted towards the
personality of the author. " His books are like the
sun, in the field of history ; where they begin, the
veils of mist, which still enshroud the wars with
the Samnites and with Pyrrhus, are lifted ; where
they end, a new and if possible more vexatious
twilight begins."

Of that part of the work which was most
original because he wrote as a contemporary and
had not to rely entirely on other writers, only frag-
ments have been preserved, and of the last years
which saw the destruction of Greek independence
very scanty fragments indeed. But much of the
material has passed directly or indirectly into the
books of later historians ; he became, indeed, for
the period which he treats the chief ultimate
source of information. If another Polybius, a
man of his political experience and his historical
faculty, had appeared in the next generation, our
knowledge of the period of the great democratic
movement, a period so critical for the Roman state

VI POSEIDONIUS 221

— from Tiberius Gracchus to the dictatorship of
Sulla — would have been far clearer than it is. The
task of continuing Polybius was, however, under-
taken by a remarkable man of exceptional talent,
Poseidonius of Apamea {c. 235-151 b.c.), whose
wide influence as a thinker is becoming more and
more recognised — recognised even to exaggeration.
He was a pupil of the Stoic Panaetius ; he taught
in Rhodes, where Cicero heard his lectures ; he was
a friend of Pompey, and well known to cultivated
circles in Rome. He travelled in western Europe,
and embodied his geographical researches in a book
On the Ocea7if which was much used by Strabo.
Besides being a philosopher and a geographer, he
was a mathematician, an astronomer (he wrote a
book on the size of the sun), a student of natural
science, a meteorologist. He made an important
contribution to the study of tides in relation to the
phases of the moon. He had the encyclopaedic
interest and the encyclopaedic faculty of an
Aristotle or a Leibniz. History was only one,
and not the chief, of his many pursuits. His
historical work (in fifty-two or perhaps sixty-two
Books), beginning with 144 B.C. where Polybius
ended, appears to have come down to 82 b.c. We
have only a few fragments of it, but it is the source
of our knowledge of those times — the source from
which Livy, Diodorus, Appian, Plutarch, and
Josephus drew. The leanings of Poseidonius were
somewhat oligarchical, and he was partial to his
friend Pompey. Like- Polybius he was a traveller.

222 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

and like Polybius he played a part in political life ;
it was a smaller part, and on the tiny stage of
Rhodes. He once acted as ambassador of his city
to Rome. Polybius was first of all a man of
action ; Poseidonius was first of all a philosopher
and a savant, and he had a strain of poetical
imagination and enthusiasm, a certain passion,
which we do not find in Polybius. It is to be
feared that for the vagueness of our knowledge on
some of the important facts of this period Posei-
donius himself is responsible rather than those who
compiled from him. His mental attitude was
certainly different from that of Polybius, and the
difference does not conduce to confidence in Posei-
donius. For in philosophy he did not follow the
sobriety of his master Panaetius ; his Stoicism was
of a more mystical strain ; in fact, it departed so
far from the earlier tenets of the sect that it may
be described as a theology. He believed in the
mantic art, on which he wrote a l;reatise,^ and in
the significance of dreams ; and he was thus
disposed to accept what Polybius would have
rejected as fabulous. On the whole, I think we
may say that while Poseidonius exercised a wide
and deep influence on the intellectual life of his
day, and occupies a considerable place in the
history of ancient learning, and while his historical
work was the chief source of the records of his
time, and its loss is deplorable, he cannot be said
to have advanced the study of history by new

^ Used by Cicero in De JHvinatione, Book i.

VI POSEIDONIUS 223

principles or methods, and in some respects he
represented a retrogression from Polybius. His
fragments show that general Culturgeschichte was a
conspicuous feature of his work ; and he seems to
have aimed at suggesting a contrast between the
rude but fresh manners of barbarians like the Gauls
and Parthians, and the decadent civilisation of
Egypt and Syria. We cannot form any definite
idea of his general treatment, but we may say with
probability that Poseidonius had qualities which
entitled him to be reckoned among those historians
to whose works men go, not for rhetoric or senti-
ment, but for the illumination of the past by
reasonable thought.^

^ Some interesting aspects of the work of Polybius, on which I have
not been able to touch in this lecture, are brought out in Mahafiy's
valuable chapter on the historian in Greek Life and ThoufflU.

LECTURE VII

THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK ON ROMAN
HISTORIOGRAPHY

The political genius of Rome might lead us to

expect that the Romans would have possessed a

home-grown historiography of their own, reflecting

their national character. But Greek influence

intervened before they had time to discover a

form of historiography for themselves ; and in

this, as in all branches of literature, they found

Greek influence irresistible. Their history was

moulded by the Greeks ; in its methods and

principles it is Greek.

Its birth from Greek history was undisguisedly

proclaimed by the fact that its founders, aristocrats

contemporary with the Second Punic war, wrote

their Roman annals in the Greek tongue. The

chief of these writers, and the only one of whose

work we can form any idea, was Q. Fabius Pictor,

whose book was consulted and respected by

Polybius. Greek was at that time recognised

as the language of the educated world ; it was

the Esperanto of those parts of the universe that

counted ; and this fact outweighed the strong

224

LECT. VII CATO ; SALLUST 225

national feeling which would have suggested
Latin. You may remember that Frederick the
Great wrote his Memoirs in French, and that
Gibbon at first thought of composing his Decline
and Fall in that polite and universal idiom.

To break the tradition required an unconven-
tional man who carried his national feelings to
the length of miso-Hellenism and who was deter-
mined to go his own way, M. Porcius Cato. He
wrote his history of Rome, the Origines^ in his
native tongue. It expressed his own strongly
marked personality, and mirrored his prejudices.
Discarding the annalistic form, he introduced
freely his ovni observations and opinions, and in
fact Uheravit animam suam. Its significance, for
our present purpose, is that it was effecti\e in
breaking the tradition : his successors wrote in
Latin.

But the change was only in the vehicle. The
Romans remained completely under the influence of
Greek methods and models. The worst tendencies
of Greek history were exemplified in the Annals of
Valerius Antias, which came down to the time of
Sulla. He outdid* Graecia mendaoc in audacious
falsification ; all claims of truth were sacrificed to
national vanity. Wachsmuth calls his work " a his-
torical romance and of the worst kind." On the
other hand we have Sallust, who was a younger con-
temporary. He belongs to a triumvirate of Roman
historians, in which some think that his true place
is second, next to Tacitus and above Livy. But

Q

226 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LEctl

unluckily of his chief book, dealing with a period*^
of twelve years, 78-67 B.C., only some speeches
and letters have survived. His monographs, the
JugurtlwL and the Catiline, enable us to see that
his work was coloured to the core by a strong
personality ; it sensitively reflected the deep mis-
givings and gloomy outlook which the experiences
of the Roman state in the days of Caesar and
Pompey suggested to a pessimistic observer. It
is significant that he was deeply attracted by the
most original of previous Latin historians, Cato
the Censor. But the writers who influenced him
most were Greeks, Thucydides and Poseidonius.
He came under the spell of Thucydides, but he
was of too diflerent a nature to imitate him except
in superficial things.

Livy was inspired by tne idea of giving to the
Romans a history of the growth of their nation,
which in the fuln**ss of its treatment and the
magnitude of its scale should be adequate to the
theme. He rose to the majesty of his subject,
and triumphantly satisfied the ideal of historio- i
graphy which was popular at the time. The
gentle and even flow of his style, his clarissimus
candor and lactea ubertas are irresistible. But he
had many of the deeply-rooted defects of the
rhetorical school, though his history is incompar-
ably superior to that of his Greek contemporary,
the rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus. He
wished to be accurate, but his standard was not
high and his methods were careless. Livy had

VII LIVY 227

no notion of the austere methods of historical
research pursued by Thucydides and Polybius.
He entirely disdained the trouble of consulting
primary sources such as inscriptions or the Ponti-
fical Acts. In one of the few cases in which he
refers to an inscription, his attention was called
to it by the Emperor Augustus, who displayed
great interest in the progress of the work. He
did not take to heart the maxim of Polybius that
personal knowledge of topography is necessary for
a historian in narrating military events. He did
not, for instance, take the trouble to visit the scene
of the Battle of Lake Trasimene, and in his story
of that action he has jumbled together two incon-
sistent accounts. On the whole, there is a great
deal of truth in the Emperor Caligula's criticism
that he was "wordy and careless," verbosus et
negligens}

As the work of Sallust reflected, in its temper,
the stirring age of the Civil Wars, so Livy's history
mirrored the calm which settled over the Roman
world after the triumph of Augustus. He was
a Court historian, and his work fitted into the
system of the political ideals of the Emperor.
With its unimpassioned optimism, it is inevitably
far less interesting than the writings of his pre-

^ It is to be noted that Professor Howard has successfully defended
Livy against the charge that he was at first deceived by the extravagant
statements of Valerius Antias, and, having afterwards become convinced
of that writer's untrustworthiness, avenged his own credulity by holding
him up to obloquy. Howard shows that the evidence is not there, and
that Livy always used Valerius with caution. See his paper on the
question, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, xvii., 1906.

228 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

decessor, who so mercilessly exposed the corrup-
tion of the Roman aristocracy, and of his greater
successor, who painted the dark sides of the
Imperial regime. Tacitus was not only a writer
of far stronger individuality than Livy, but also
a far greater historian. He was more critical, and
was guided by a higher standard of what historical
research required. Our distrust in reading him is
not of his facts or of his use of sources, but of his
innuendo and his illumination. Haupt said he
was born to be a tragic poet, and his pages are
saturated with his personality. The dominant
note of all he wrote is expressed in those words of
doom, urgent imperii fata. The historian who
exercised most influence on him was undoubtedly
Sallust, whose political and ethical pessimism was
akin to his own. He outdid Sallust in brevitas
Sallustiana ; he resembled him too in solemn and
deadly seriousness ; in his passion for psychological
analysis. But here he was also affected by the
tendencies of the rhetorical schools of his own
time ; there, too, psychological analysis and epi-
grammatic brevity had come into fashion. Tacitus,
though an accomplished student of rhetoric, is very
careful and sparing in the use of rhetorical artifices,
which he always reserves for the production of
some definite effect. But in his descriptions of
battles he sacrifices accuracy to style ; his motive
for describing them at all was not military, but
rhetorical, interest.

It so happens that we have a means of testing

vn TACITUS 229

the relations of the speeches which Tacitus has
introduced, to those actually delivered. A bronze
tablet of Lyons preserves a considerable portion
of the harangue which the Emperor Claudius
addressed to the Senate when he conferred the
iu^ honorum on the inhabitants of Gaul. Tacitus
professes to reproduce this speech. A comparison
rof his version with the original shows that he took
fit as his basis, but remodelled it, rearranging the
order, adding some new matter, cutting down
tedious passages, adapting it to his own style, and
eliminating the Emperor's ungainly mannerisms,
^or instance, Claudius in the middle of his speech
^suddenly addressed himself: "It is high time,
O Tiberius Caesar Germanicus, to disclose yourself
to the Senate and show whither your oration
tends." This eccentric transition does not appear
in Tacitus. But the general tenor and argument
are the same. The case is highly instructive as
exemplifying how the best historians like Tacitus
and Thucydides constructed their speeches. When
an original speech had been published, historians
refrained from reproducing it. The literary canon
of homogeneity of style, which the Tacitean treat-
ment of the oration of Claudius illustrates so well,
forbade them to transcribe it ; and it would have
been obviously out of place to challenge com-
parison by a paraphrase. We can prove this rule
in the case of Livy, who expressly declines to give
a speech of Cato for the Rhodians, which Cato
had included in his own history, and in the case of

230 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Tacitus, who similarly omits the dying discourse of
Seneca on the ground that it had been already
published. Exceptions were only made in favour
of very short pieces. For instance, Tacitus repro-
duces verbally a brief communication of Tiberius
to the Senate, just as Xenophon reproduced the
laconic message of a Lacedaemonian admiral.
Otherwise, the rule which the Roman historians
inherited from the Greeks was never to reproduce
documents or speeches in their original form, and
to avoid reproducing at all such as had been
published. Suetonius and Cornelius Nepos were
exceptional in not obeying this rule ; they could
quote the example of Polybius.

Sallust had skilfully employed the Thucydidean
method of exhibiting the motives and personalities
of historical actors in speeches. But he had not
confined himself to this method ; he also freely
pourtrayed characters himself ; for example, his two
contrasted pictures of Cato and Caesar are famous ;
and he had freely introduced personal comments of
his o^\Ti. Tacitus adopted the dramatic and indirect
method, but he developed that method with such
elaborate skill and refinement that it became a new
thing in his hands. One of the simplest examples
of his art is the portrait of Augustus, which he
exhibits reflected in the mirror of men's judgments
about him. It is managed just as a dramatist
might make two people of opposite views meet
in the street and argue over somebody's character,
in order to show what manner of man he was.

VII TACITUS 231

But the chef d^ceuvre of Tacitus is his Tiberius,
The author had psychologically reconstructe4 that
emperor on the assumption that the mainspring
of his character was dissimulation ; he never dis-
cusses it as a problem, but simply reveals the man
in this light, interprets his acts and words in this
sense, and uses all the devices of innuendo, of
which he was so subtle a master, to bring it out.
The Tacitean method is illustrated by contrasting
the descriptions of Tiberius in Suetonius and
Velleius Paterculus, who collect together all the
traits of the Emperor and facts which' attest them.
It is also evident that Tacitus has produced his
general effect by a limitation of his subject, by
emphasizing certain sides and omitting others.
The Annals are a history of Rome and the crimes
of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The wars of the
period are indeed recorded, but it may be said
with virtual truth that the book ignores the
Empire. No reader of Tacitus would come away
with the smallest conception of the efficiency with
which the Empire as a whole was administered.

Tacitus, like Sallust, looked at history from
an ethical point of view, I mean from the point
of view of the morality which is valid for the indi-
vidual. He judged actions by the ideals of virtue
and nobility ; he was not prepared to take time
and circumstances into account, nor to acknow-
ledge that the standard applied to private conduct
may be inapplicable to public transactions. In
this respect, he occupied the same ground as the

m

232 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

late Lord Acton, whose first principle in reading
history was the application of the strictest rules
of private morality to the actions of public men.
It may be thought by some that this attitude in
examining the past is somewhat futile. Sociology
is still in its infancy, and it may be asked. Has
the time come for verdicts ? Is not Thucydides
more reasonable, and is not his political analysis
more instructive, than the ethical criticism of
Tacitus ? The predominating moral interest is
of course one of the features which Tacitus shares
with the rhetorical school. The ethical side had
been emphasized, without passion, by Greek his-
torians since the fourth century ; with Tacitus it
was a question of life and death.

I have still to refer to an illustrious Latin
historian who stands altogether apart from the
rest, in method and style, as well as in his own
relation to the facts which he records. As a
clear businesslike narrative of external events,
told from the inside, by one who had fuller know-
ledge than any other man, the Commentaries of
Caesar are a model of excellence. In reading
them, indeed, we have to remember that it was
not a purely historical interest that moved the
writer to assume the historian's part. He had
political purposes in view. The Memoir of the
Gallic War was written to show the necessity
of his actions and to prove or illustrate his com-
petence. The history of the Civil War, which
he left unfinished, was designed to shift the blame

VII CAESAR 233

from his own shoulders. Thus the works are in a
certain sense political pamphlets. In the story of
the conquest of Gaul we cannot control the nar-
rative ; it is possible that much has been sup-
pressed ; and Caesar's artless simplicity may have
been the instrument of most artful misrepresenta-
tion. Our present concern, however, is not the
criticism of his facts, but his choice of that
plain straightforward method of narration, which
had been introduced by the men who had worked
in the service of Alexander the Great. Of this
genus of historical literature, Caesar's Comment-
aries are the only extant specimen ; we can have
little doubt that they are the best which antiquity
produced ; but they were not an original growth
on Roman soil ; the Memoirs of Pyrrhus and
Aratus were precedents. It is, however, signifi-
cant that Caesar regarded his own work as merely
material for the professional, that is, the rhetorical,
historian to work up.

You see then that the most eminent Roman
historians moved entirely within the limits of
Greek traditions, in regard to principles and
methods. For them all, history was, as Cicero
considered it, a branch of the art of rhetoric. We
may, indeed, say that from the beginning of the
Empire the distinction between Greek and Latin
historians has only a subordinate significance. In
studying historical literature from the time of
Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Greek and
Latin writers must be considered together.

234 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS li

Rhetorical history remained in the ascendant,
but antiquarian history also had some devotees.
Rome has a distinguished roll of antiquarians to
point to, such as Varro, Hyginus, Asconius, and j
it was the distinction of Suetonius to have written
history which aimed simply at the industrious
collection of facts, without any thought of j
rhetorical effects. His political attitude was
very similar to that of Tacitus, but in his bio- j
graphics, which (as Leo has shown) are built j
up on a conventional scheme, he keeps his own I
personal views in the background and lets the ]
facts speak.

The development of the Graeco-Roman his-
toriography under the early Empire, up to the
time of Theodosius the Great, can now be studied ^
in the elaborate work of Peter,^ the special value !
of which consists in treating the Greek and Latin
historians together, and in showing how the writ- i
ing of history was affected by the Court and by 1
the public. He has illustrated abundantly how ^
a writer's freedom in treating contemporary history
was limited by fears and hopes ; and how his scope
was narrowed by the lack of interest of the public
of these ages in any contemporary events except
the scandals of the Court. Exceptions were few.
We have been accustomed to think of Ammianus
Marcellinus as the only Latin historian after
Tacitus whose merits entitle him to a high place.
Recently a new star has been announced, whom

^ See Bibliography.

VII UNIVERSAJL HISTORY 235

Kornemann, the discoverer, has named "the last
great historian of Rome." This unknown writer
is said to have suppUed the authors of that am-
biguous collection of imperial biographies known
as the Historia Augusta with valuable material.
Even if we accept the demonstrations, the place
he holds among Latin historians will not be vacated
by Ammianus for this anonymous author who
flourished in the age of the Severi.^

I may say, finally, a few words about universal
history, which became an established form of com-
position under the Roman Empire. It has often
been noticed how the cosmopolitan doctrines of
the Stoics, their creed of the brotherhood of men,
gave a stimulus to the construction of compre-
hensive works embracing the annals of the known
peoples of the world. The value of universal
history, on the Stoic assumptions, has been stated
impressively enough by Diodorus of Agyrion.
"All men," he says, "living, or wlio once lived,
belong to the common human family though
divided from one another by time and space ; and
the universal historian who aims at bringing them
all under a common view is a sort of minister of
divine providence. That providence orders alike
the stars and the natures of men, throughout the
cycles of time, allotting to each its proper part ;
and those who have recorded the history of the

^ E. Kornemann, Kaiser Hadrian und der letzte groase Eigtoriker von
Rom, 1905 ; O. Th. Schulz, Do* Kaiserhaus der Antonine und der leizte
Historiker Roms, 1907.

k

236 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

world as if it were one town, have, in their
works, supplied mankind with a sort of bourse
for exchanging records of the past." Diodorus
himself, however, was quite unequal to the task.
There is no central, idea in his work ; there is
no grasp of lines of development, no discernment
of interconnexion between the parts of his sub-
ject, no independent thought of his own. The
special histories of the various peoples rest side
by side in the framework of his forty Books
(was the number suggested by Polybius ?). His
history is a rhetorical compilation of excerpts
from older writers which he has paraphrased, and
its value for us lies in the circumstance that its
extant portions contain so much of lost writers
like Ephorus and Poseidonius.

Far superior in conception and grasp seems to
have been the lost work of Pompeius Trogus,
of which we know something from its Epitome^
by Justin. It was a universal history of th<
Hellenic and oriental world. Roman history wi
excluded up to the point at which Greek anc
Eastern peoples came into contact and collisioi
with Rome. It has been plausibly conjectured
that the author omitted Roman history because
it had been so fully treated by his contemporary,
Livy. But though its universal character was
thus limited, it showed a sense of unity and con-
tinuity, like that of Polybius ; and this was re-
flected in the title of the work, Philippica, which
indicated that Macedonian history was, more or

i

i

VII UNIVERSAL HISTORY 237

less, the guiding or binding thread. Older history-
had culminated in the Macedonian Empire, and
out of it had developed the great monarchies after
Alexander. The work was thus an intelligent
development of Polybian ideas.

Such reconstructions helped to prepare for the
new framework into which history was compressed,
and the new meaning which was given to it, by
the Christians. They undertook the task of syn-
chronizing Graeco-Roman with Jewish records,
and constructing a universal history in theological
interests.^ The Church could not avoid grappling
with this problem. Appealing to the civilised
world, Christianity was forced to take account of
the past of the non- Hebrew peoples ; making ex-
traordinary and paradoxical claims for the super-
lative importance of Jewish history, it had to
assign to the histories of the Greeks and Romans
their proper place in the universal scheme. The
Hebrew Scripture determined the six great ages
of human history distinguished by Augustine, of
which the last began with the birth of Christ, and
would endure — such was the confidence of these
interpreters of history — to the end of the world. ^
The Christian interpretation found the central idea
of world-history in a religious and not in a political

^ The Christian world-chronicle was constructed by Sextus Julius
Africanus, and then, on the basis of his work, by Eusebius.

^ The succession of the four great monarchies (Assyrian, Persian,
Macedonian, and Roman), in which Greek writers had already seen a
principle of chronological division, was brought into connexion with the
prophecies of Daniel by Jerome ; and Jerome had no doubt that the
Roman was the last.

238 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

phenomenon, and it introduced into historiograph
a new and pernicious principle. Hitherto history
had been perfectly free. Homer had indeed en- I
joyed an excessive authority among the Greeks,
but belief in Homer was not a religious doctrine,
and men like Thucydides and Eratosthenes used
the Homeric poems, just as we do, like any other
ancient source. It was with imperfect methods
and inadequate conceptions of the conditions of
the problem that the Greeks had attempted to
order the traditions of their own and other races
into a consistent whole ; but they had worked
quite freely, guided by reason alone and unfettered
by dogma. Christian historiography installed the
superior guidance of an indefeasible authority, the
divinely inspired tradition of the Jewish records,
whereby they determined the general frame and
perspective of the history of the world. This was
the first appearance of the principle which Car-
dinal Manning expressed in his famous saying
that dogma must overcome history, and which
guides all the historiography of the Ultramontane
school.

The Christian reconstruction of history held
men's minds throughout the Middle Ages, im-
posed as it was by the highest ecclesiastical
authority. But though it marked no advance-
ment of knowledge, though the synthesis was
simply grotesque, it served to emphasize and in-
tensify the idea of the unity of mankind which
had already been preached by the Stoics. With

VII UNIVERSAL HISTORY 239

the Stoics this idea had such a vague application
that it came to Httle more than an abstract
theory ; with the Christians it acquired a real
and intense meaning, inasmuch as they beheved
all the inhabitants of the earth to have a common
and vital interest, though they might not know
it, in the Christian dispensation. In so far as
it accustomed men to realise the conception of
a solidarity among all the races of humanity, the
Christian interpretation assisted in the transition
from the ancient to the modern conception of
universal history. For this office a price was
paid. History submitted to authority, and free
inquiry was suspended for centuries.

We may also note that the conception of uni-
versal history which prevailed in the Middle Ages
was connected with a general theory sometimes
described as the first attempt at a philosophy of
history, in so far as it professed to supply a
guiding clue and a meaning to the whole de-
velopment. This theory was worked out by
Augustine in his De civitate Dei, wherein the
event to which the whole world moves is
defined as the victory of the civitas Dei (the
Church) over the civitas Diaboli (represented by
the secular kingdoms). This transcendent prin-
ciple could give little help to a student desiring
to comprehend the causes of the actual course of
history ; and the speculation of Augustine no more
claims to be called a philosophy of history than
the cyclical theories of the Greeks. But though

240 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

Geschichtsphilosophie is a modern invention and
Herder was its founder, the Christian construction
marks an important stage : for the historical pro-
cess was for the first time definitely conceived
as including past and future in a totality which
must have a meaning.

In these lectures I hope that I have in some
measure explained how the Greeks did not suddenly
create, but rather by a gradual process of criticism

I evolved history, disengaging it from the mythic
envelope in which fact and fiction were originally |

, blended ; how this process corresponded to the ;
development of critical thought and scientific
inquiry, first in Ionia and then at Athens ; how
the early historians were stimulated by those polit-
ical events which brought Ionia into close contact
with the East and by the simultaneous beginnings
of geographical exploration ; and how history com-
pleted the first stage of its growth and definitely
extricated itself from the mythological mists which
hung about its infancy and childhood, through the i
brilliant inspiration which occurred to the genius
of Thucydides, the idea of studying critically and \

"^recording political events as they occurred. We;
saw that the chief events in Greek history re- '
acted upon Greek historiography. The Persian
conquests led to the investigation of "modern"
history ; the defeats of Persia by Greece inspired
Herodotus; the Athenian Empire stimulated Thucy-
dides ; the rise of the Macedonian power, suggest-

VII SUMMARY 241

ing a new possibility of Hellenic unity, suggested
also the conception of a comprehensive or universal
history of Hellas ; the Macedonian conquest of the
East enlarged the range of historical interest ; and,
finally, the Roman conquests created in the mind
of Polybius the largest conception of history that
had yet emerged. We saw too that history was
intimately affected by the general intellectual move-
ments of each successive age — by the scepticism
and science of Ionia, by the great illumination of
the Sophists, by the literary ideals of Isocrates, by
the literary reaction of Asia against Attic conven-
tion, by the Peripatetic philosophy which created
antiquarian history, and afterwards by Stoicism ; we
saw that it was governed in its general develop-
ment by the transcendent influence of rhetoric in
Greek life ; and we noticed that it was affected by
the fact that in some measure it supplied the
demand which is now supplied by fiction. Finally,
we have seen how Roman historiography followed
the lines of Greek historiography from which it
sprang.

It still remains to consider the ideas which the
ancients entertained as to the use and purpose of
studying history and recording it, in the light of
modern ideas on the same subject

LECTURE VIII

VIEWS OF THE ANCIENTS CONCERNING THE
USE OF HISTORY

It was not reserved for modern historians to ask '
themselves why history should be studied and why
it should be written. The question was considered i
by ancient writers ; and it was first posed by Thucy-
dides. Herodotus indeed announced that the
general purpose of his work was to preserve the
memory of past events and record great actions
which deserve the meed of fame. This statementiB
shows that Herodotus had not asked himself the
question ; he assumed, and rightly assumed, theM
human interest of history ; but he did not examined
what it meant. He was prompted to write his
prose epic by the same instinct which prompted the^
Homeric minstrels to compose their epic poems.

fiova- dp* doiBov dviJKev deiSejjuevai Kkea dvBpwv.
The muse inspired the bard to sing of glorious deeds of men.

He esteemed the aim of the historian to be exactl]

the same as the aim of the epic poet — to entertain'

an audience. So long as it was written from thi&i

242

LECT.viii PRAGMATICAL DOCTRINE 243

motive, it is clear that history was not likely to
make truth and accuracy its first consideration.

Thucydides definitely asked himself the question
why a record of human events should be kept, and
his answer placed history on a new footing. He
repudiated the view that its only or chief object
was to provide entertainment, and he laid down a
reason for its study, which, so far as we know, was
discovered by himself. " The accurate knowledge
of what has happened," he says, "will be useful,
because, according to human probability, similar
things will happen again." This is the first state-
ment of the opinion that history has another
function than the satisfaction of curiosity or of
patriotic pride, that it has a definite practical
utility, that it contains lessons to instruct the states-
man or the military commander. No historian was
more profoundly convinced of the truth of this view
than Polybius. He believed implicitly, as we saw,
that history is a school of statesmanship as well as
of the art of war ; he is never weary of insisting on
the practical utility of his subject ; and the earnest-
ness with which he held and preached this "prag-
matical " doctrine is one of the distinctions of his
work. As we have seen, the larger number of the
ancient historiographers at all times laid themselves
out exclusively to please the reading public. But
any ancient writer, subsequent to Thucydides, if
you had asked him what was the use of studying
history beyond the passing entertainment which it
might yield, would have replied that the study

244 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lkct.

served a practical purpose, supplying examples and
warnings, and enabling men to judge the present
and future by the past. Moralists (and with many
historians the moral interest was predominant)
would have insisted further that history supplied
object lessons in ethics.

Now the point I would draw your attention to
is that the ancients, generally, regarded history as
possessing a practical use, and found the chief justi-
fication of its study therein. Before going on to
consider the assumptions on which their particular
view of its utility depends, I must say a word about
the general proposition that history is a subject of
practical value. It seems to be opposed to a view,
promulgated in the last century, which repudiates
all practical ends and asserts that history must be
studied purely for its own sake, as an end in itself,
without any ulterior object, and that any bearings
on practical life which may be assigned to it are
incidental. This view, if interpreted in an absolute
and literal sense, seems to me to be no more than
simple nonsense. History cannot be isolated (except
provisionally for methodical purposes) from the
total complex of human knowledge ; and human
knowledge has no value out of relation to human
life. But if we explain " history for its own sake "
as a regulative maxim, it is important and useful.
In this sense, it means that history must be studied
as if it had no bearing on anything beyond itself;
the historian, in investigating the facts of the past,J
must not, at least in the first instance, consider any-

VIII HISTORY FOR ITS OWN SAKE 245

thing beyond the facts themselves. In other words,
it assumes that history is a science. The study of
natural phenomena intimately affects society in its
ethics, religion, and politics ; the study of historical
phenomena must affect them too. But like physical
sciences and all other branches of knowledge, history
requires for its scientific development complete
freedom and independence ; its value is annulled
and its powers are paralysed if it consents to be
ancillary to politics, ethics, or theology ; in order to
fulfil its function, it must (like all sciences) be treated
as if it were an end itself. This is the true value
and, so far as I can see, the only value of the cry,
" History for its own sake ! " inscribed on the banner
under which history has made such a striking
advance in the nineteenth century. But this value,
I repeat, is only that of a regulative principle ; it
concerns only the methods and immediate aims of
historians ; it does not express the final purpose of
their labours.

The Greeks were the founders of antiquarianism,
and in a previous lecture I spoke of this as one
of their precious contributions to human progress.
Once it was started, it was pursued instinctively,
unreflectingly, without asking the question, why?
But a general answer was given in the circumstances
of its origin. It was founded, as I said, by the Aris-
totelian school of philosophy, and was the result of
the importance which Aristotle attached to all
phenomena, as things worth study and possessing
significance for man's synthesis of the universe.

246 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

And without being Aristotelians, or belonging to
any school of philosophy, we must admit, that, as
all things are interrelated, there must be a point at
which every fact has a possible significance for
man s view of his world, and therefore a practical
value. Take historical phenomena. In the final
synthesis of history, which may at least conceivably
be achieved in the indefinitely distant future, all
facts must have a place. And when we con-
sider the inevitable lacunae in our records, it is clear
that every fact is precious ; for instance, one trivial
detail may be the means of leading us to the right
reconstruction, just as in a detective's investigation
an apparently insignificant circumstance (such as
the spelling of a word) may put the clue in his
hands. You never can tell. Thus the antiquarian
historian is playing the long game. He collects,
sifts, and interprets facts which, if you take the short
view, may seem merely curious, without relation
to human life, not the business of a man whose
interests are human ; but at any time one of these
facts may enable us to solve a problem, or prove a
theory, the human interest of which is evident. We j
may say then that the cry of " history for its own
sake," means that history has begun systematically
to play the long game. Let us remember that
however long be the game and however technical
the rules, human interest is its ultimate justifi-
cation. Let us not take the phrase "history
for its own sake " to mean that it is not the ^1
proper function of history to serve any ulterior

VIII ANTIQUARIAN HISTORY 247

interest, and that any practical use it may have
is thrown in, but not guaranteed. This idea is
characteristically academic, one of those cloistral
inanities w^hich flourish, preposterous and un-
ashamed, in the congenial air of universities.

But, further, we must not be misled into icmor-
ing or underrating the immediate practical value
which the study of history possesses ; and this is
the point which I would invite you especially to
consider. The most important and able ancient
historians, although some of them had antiquarian
interests, held that the purpose of studying history
must be sought in its practical value, and in imme-
diate relations to life. But their idea of what that
practical value consisted in, necessarily differs from
our view of the matter at the present stage of
man's development. The experience of the race
and the advance of scientific thought have trans-
formed our ideas of our own position in the universe ;
and now the human or practical interest in history
turns out to be far more vital and deeply founded
than the ancients, with their outlook on life, could
have suspected.

Let us examine more closely the ancient doc-
trine. Both Thucydides and Polybius based their
view that history possesses direct utility for men of
affairs, on the assumption that similar situations
recur, and that the problems of the past will come
up again for solution in the future. Thucydides,
according to his habit, states this doctrine in the
briefest form ; Polybius explains the principle with

248 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

his usual elaboration, and rests it on a philosophical
theory. We saw how he presented the theory of
anacyclosis, a cyclical movement of history. At
the end of each cycle a new circuit begins, and
history follows, as it were, along the line of its
former tracks. This view was widely current ;
Cicero expresses it in the phrase miri orbes et quasi
drcuitus, " certain strange orbits and revolutions."
The a priori synthesis of universal history which
was launched on the world by the early Christian
fathers, in the interest of their religion, threw the
cyclical theory into the background. That theory
was plainly incompatible with the central dogma
of Christianity. Alter erit turn Tiphys would
have meant alter erit turn Christus, and this
would have stultified the Christian faith. But
cyclical theories reappeared at the Renaissance.
Machiavelli, who agreed with the ancients, and
went further than they, in his high estimation
of history as an instructress in politics, similarly
based his view on the principle of a cyclical
movement. Guicciardini likewise believed in the
doctrine.

Our longer experience has taught us that the
assumptions on which the ancients grounded the
claim of history to practical utility are untenable.
The theory of cycles has been abandoned for the
idea of indefinite "progress," and we have ascertained
that history does not repeat itself; that the like-
nesses between historical phenomena at different
times are superficial and far less important than

1

VIII THEORY OF CYCLES 249

the differences. It follows that the particular kind
of use which the ancients ascribed to history
cannot be upheld, and that, if it does possess
value for the education of men of affairs, that
value is either of a more general nature, or entirely
different from what they supposed.

And, as a matter of fact, we have ceased to look
on history as a storehouse of examples and warnings
for the politician, though we recognise that it has
an educative value by familiarising him with the
variety of political phenomena and by enlarging
his horizon. But the conceptions of causality and
development which govern our view, but did not
govern the Greek view, of the world, have shown
us that any given situation, or any social or
political phenomenon, cannot be understood unless
we know its antecedents ; or in other words, that
to comprehend the significance of the present we ^
must be acquainted with the history of the past. I
This, I think you would agree, is the main reason
(according to our present ideas) why a study of
history is desirable, if not indispensable, for the
man who undertakes to share in the conduct of
public affairs, and is desirable also for the private
citizen who votes, and criticizes, and contributes to
the shaping of public opinion.

We may therefore still make the same claim
for the study of history which Polybius made for it,
that it is a school for statesmen and citizens,
though we base the claim on a different ground.
But beyond this direct utility, it has a larger and

^>

250 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

deeper practical importance. For the last two
generations historical investigation has been exer
cising, steadily and irresistibly, an influence on our
mental attitude ; it has been affecting our sense of
our own position in the world and our estimate of
the values of things. History, in the ordinary and
narrower sense of recorded human transactions, has
been advancing concurrently with that wider his-
tory, which is the business of physical science, and
which embraces the evolution of life on our planet,
the evolution of the planet itself, and the evolution
of the cosmos. But certain results of historical
science, though less sensational, have been in some
respects not less effective, than the results of
physical science, because they are closer to us
and, at present at least, concern us more directly. J
These results may perhaps be summed up most]
concisely in the phrase used by German writers,
"historical relativity." We have come to see that
all events in the past, however differing in import-
ance, were relative to their historical conditions;
that they cannot be wrenched out of their chrono
logical context and endowed with an absolute
significance. They are parts of a whole, and have
no meaning except in relation to that whole, just
as a man's arm has no meaning apart from his
body. The recognition of this truth at once affects
our view of the present ; for it follows that the
ideas and events of to-day have no absolute value,
i but merely represent a particular stage of human
development. Ideas and facts are thus put in

'i

VIII HISTORICAL RELATIVITY 251

their place. Some are abased, others are exalted.
If they are dependent on their historical context,
they may also be justified by it For instance,
from the point of view of modern conditions, we
shudder at the relation which the Church held to
the State in the Middle Ages ; but when we study
the conditions of that period, we may acknowledge
that the relation was justified. It is hard to say
at which of our present-day Western institutions
future generations will shudder most ; but we may
hope that they will also discover justifications.
This principle of historical relativity induces what
may be called the historical attitude of mind ; it
changes our outlook also on the present and the
future ; and therefore it has a direct practical
value. Perhaps it is fair to say that it is one of
the most important results of the mental develop-
ment of the nineteenth century.^

I have suggested that this change is not less
effective than our new conceptions of the evolution
of nature. I may illustrate this by comparing the
ways in which the advance of historical science and

^ Although the principle of historical relativity, with its implication
that there are no absolute values in history, that values vary according to
time and place, is a modern idea ; nevertheless the Greeks made virtual
application of it, occasionally and in very simple cases. Thucydides
furnishes an instance. He suggests that, if the Greeks of his day regard
piracy as an offence against morals, they must not apply their standard
to a different stage of civilisation, when piracy was esteemed an honour-
able profession. This is one of the few examples to be found in ancient
writers of what we call an historical sense. Another example is furnished
by Eratosthenes, who pointed out that in studying Homer the historical
conditions of his age must be taken into account, and that his geogra-
phical ideas corresponded to the ignorance which then prevailed ; his
authority therefore has no value transcending the conditions of his own
time.

252 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

the advance of physical science have respectively
operated on theology. The discoveries of geology,
the doctrine of evolution, and the Darwinian theory
created loud alarm in the Churches, but they really
only touched outworks ; and their acceptance by
ecclesiastical authorities could not have had a much
greater effect on the received body of essential
doctrine than the acceptance of the heliocentric
system which seemed a diabolical idea to the per-
secutors of Galilei. Contrast the effects of the
historical criticism which began with Strauss and
Bauer. It has been operating as a steady and
powerful solvent of traditional beliefs ; and to-day
we see that within the Churches the men who have
brains and are not afraid to use them are trans-
forming the essential doctrines, under the aegis of
historical criticism, so radically that when those doc-
trines emerge it will be difficult to recognise them.
I may observe here, and by the way, that it is
highly important for the historian to be aware that
the doctrine of historical relativity applies no less
to his own historical judgments than to other facts.
His view is conditioned by the mentality of his
own age ; the focus of his vision is determined
within narrow limits by the conditions of contem-
porary civilisation. There can therefore be nothing
final about his judgments, and their permanent
interest lies in the fact that they are judgments
pronounced at a given epoch and are characteristic
of the tendencies and ideas of that epoch. The
Greeks had no notion of this. They would have

VIII HISTORICAL RELATIVITY 253

said that the judgment of a wise man at any time
might be final or absolutely valid. Older Christian
historians thought that they were in possession of
absolute criteria ; and the illusion that a historical
judgment may be the last word is still prevalent.
It must ultimately yield to the principle of his-
torical relativity which, as the experience of the
race grows, will be more and more fully recognised. \

Before I pass from this principle I may note
another point. One might think a priori that the
study of history is eminently adapted to form an
antidote to chauvinism, self-satisfaction, and in-
tolerance. It cannot, however, be said that
hitherto it has actually done much to counteract
these habits of mind ; it has been more inclined to
subserve them. But it seems probable that it may
be more effective in the future. The new historical
conception, which we have been considering, is
evidently calculated to promote the spirit of
tolerance, and cool the spirit of self-satisfaction,
more efficaciously than any previous idea. The
tolerance of the ordinary man who naively urges in
excuse of the heathen that they " know no better "
must be applied, on the principle of historical rela-
tivity, to ourselves ; that principle bids us remember
that we "know no better," that we stand within
the strict barriers of our historical conditions, and
that we shall be judged hundreds or thousands of
years hence by critics who look forth from a higher
specular platform of civilisation.

The thought of the judgment of a distant

II

m

254 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

posterity leads us to another, though closely related,
conception which has only in recent times become
alive and real for us. It is remarkable how little
the Greeks and Romans thought or speculated
about the future of the race. The shortness of the
period over which their historical records extended,
their doctrine of cyclical recurrence, and the widely
spread belief in a decline from a golden age, may
have hindered them from taking a practical interest
in the subject ; though they contemplated long
periods of time, for instance the magnus annus^
equivalent in duration to 12,954 ordinary years.
Tacitus, in a very interesting passage, asks : What
do we mean by using the terms ancient and
modern ? " The four hundred years, which separate
us from Demosthenes, seem long in comparison
with the brevity of human life ; but they are almost
a vanishing quantity if you compare them with the
duration of the ages {ad naturam saeculorum) ;
why, if you consider even the magnus annus,
Demosthenes, whom we call an ancient, seems to
belong to the same year, nay the same month, as
ourselves." This passage stands almost alone, I
think, in its appreciation of historical perspective.
But such flashes of consciousness of our position
in time did not awaken any serious or persistent
curiosity about the future fortunes of the race.
The Greeks were imbued with what may justly be
called a progressive spirit ; but they did not asso-
ciate their labours for the improvement of civilisa-
tion with any notion of an indefinite advance of the

VIII IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT 255

human race in knowledge, in mastery of nature,
and in the structure of society. I think we may
safely say that the general conditions of their own
life and thought seemed to the Greeks final, capable
only of modification and improvement in details;
they never dreamed that more complex forms of civil-
isation, and entirely different from theirs, might be
reached by a gradual development in the course of
time. They dreamed of a golden age, but they
generally placed it behind them. They sought it
in simpler, not in more complex, conditions. And
their eagerness to improve the lot of man did not
take the form of a conscientious or passionate sense
of obligation to posterity. The idea of duty
towards posterity which often appears in Greek
patriotic orations has mainly a rhetorical value, and
does not imply any serious concern about future
generations. Afterwards, the fancy of the Chris-
tians that the life of the human race on earth
would be very brief, and that men would then pass
into monotonous states in which there would be no
history, excluded any thoughts of future terrestrial
progress ; and the psychological effects of this
error, promulgated by the Church, are a distinct
factor in human development. It is only since this
fiction has been exploded that the vista of progress
in an indefinitely long future has become part of
our mental outlook, and has introduced, as all ideas
of such a range must introduce, a new ethical
principle, namely, duty towards the future heirs of
the ages. Progress was a feature in the philosophy

fi.

1

256 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

of Leibniz. In 1750 Turgot stated a theory of
historical progress very clearly. But though the
doctrine was not new at the time of the French
Revolution, the full significance of the idea was
first impressed on the world in the famous book of
Turgot's friend, Condorcet, Esquisse dun tableau
historique des progi'es de T esprit humain (1795).
Here the meaning of the historical process was
declared to be social and political progress. It
is easy to see that this view, which was diffused
by the writings of Comte and Buckle, as well as
by the speculations of Saint-Simon and Fourier,
was calculated to stimulate interest in the past
more powerfully than any previous conception.
It imparts to history an intenser meaning. We are
led to conceive the short development which is
behind us and the long development which is
before us as coherent parts of a whole ; our ** prag-
matic " interest in the destinies of our race neces-
sarily communicates a " pragmatic " interest to its
past fortunes.

"Progress" of course implies a judgment of value,
and is not scientific. It assumes a standard, —
some end or ends, by relation to which we judge
historical movements and declare that they mean
progress. We have no proof that absolute pro-
gress has been made, for we have no knowledge of
an absolute end ; and, therefore, scientifically we ,
are not justified in speaking of the history of
civilised man as progress ; we can only be sure that
it is a causal sequence of transformations.

VIII IDEA OF PROGRESS 257

It may, then, be objected that the indefinite
progress of the race is only an assumption, which
time may disprove. It may be asked too, what
guarantee have we that our Western civilisation,
granting that it is on an upward gradient, and that
no bounds or bars to its ascent are yet in sight, may
not some day reach a definite limit, through the
operation of some cause which is now obscure to
our vision ? Fully admitting that such theoretical
scepticism is justifiable, and that persistent progress
is an assumption, I submit that it does not affect
my point. The idea of progress is, in the present
age, an actual, living force ; and what I have said
as to its bearing on the study of history remains
valid. May we not even say that the uncertainty
which hangs about the question, with the possi-
bility of man's progress on the one hand, and of
his decadence on the other, communicates an
appealing interest to the study of the past, as a
field in which we may discover, if we can penetrate
deep enough, some clue to the destinies of civilisa-
tion ?

The absence of the idea of an indefinite progress
in Greek and Roman speculation is one of the
gulfs which separate us from the ancients. Its
emergence has had the consequence of making
history far more alive. With the Greeks, who
applied the inadequate conception of Tyche or
Fortune, the reconstruction of the past was an
instinct which they justified by reasons which were
superficial. For us, because we have a deeper

s

258 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS lect.

insight into the causal connexion of past and
future, because we have grasped the idea of develop-
ment and dreamed the dream of progress, the
reconstruction of history has become a necessity.

It has also become a science. The promotion of
history to the rank of a science or TVissenschaft is
due to the conception of development. We con-
ceive every historical event or phenomenon as a
moment in a continuous process of change, and the
historian's problem is to determine as completely
as possible its connexions with what went before
and with what came after, to define its causal rela-
tions and its significance in the development to
which it belongs. The unattainable ideal of his-
torical research is to explain fully the whole
development of human civilisation. This is as
much a scientific problem as to trace the history of
the solar system or of animal life on the earth,
though natural and historical science deal with
very different kinds of data, and employ different
methods. If the Greeks had possessed records
extending over the history of two or three
thousand years, the conception of causal develop-
ment would probably have emerged, and they
might have founded scientific history. The limita-
tion of their knowledge of the past to a few
centuries disabled them from evolving this idea ;
and history therefore always remained subordinate
to immediate practical ends. But we must not
underrate the importance of the new view which
Thucydides announced to the world, that history is

VIII SCIENTIFIC HISTORY 259

not merely a story book, but an education for
statesmen. That view marked a great advance.
It meant a new conception of the historian's
responsibility and the inauguration of a higher
standard of accuracy. Its proclamation by Thucy-
dides may be placed beside the announcement of
scientific history in 1824 ^ by Ranke, who suggested
that the historian's task is not to teach lessons or
pass judgments, but simply to investigate how
things happened. And as the view of Thucydides
was combined with the requirement of accuracy,
so the appearance of the modern doctrine was
contemporaneous with the introduction of scientific
methods.

As a science, history is disinterested. Yet the
very idea of development, which led to the con-
ception of history as a science, has enhanced its
interest for mankind. So far, indeed, is the Greek
view that history has a value for life from being
exploded, that the bearing of the past on our
mental outlook, on our ideas and judgments, on the
actualities of the present and the eventualities of
the future, is increasing more and more, and is
becoming charged with deeper significance. The
Hellenic conception of history as humanistic is
truer than ever.

1 Preface to OeschicfUen der romanischen und germanischm Volker von
1494 bis 1535.

APPENDIX

THE RE-HANDLING OF HIS HISTORY BY
THUCYDIDES

The natural probability that Thucydides occupied the years
of his exile after the Fifty Years'" Peace in finishing and
revising the history of the war which was apparently over,
is borne out by a number of passages which evidently con-
template only the Ten Years'* War, and must have been
differently phrased if they had been composed after 404 b.c.
But, on the other hand, there are also a number of passages
which refer to later events, and imply the Sicilian expedition
and the fall of Athens. The obvious explanation is that the
author read over the first portion of his work, and made
a number of additions and alterations, but allowed some
inconsistent phrases to escape his eye.^

The most unmistakable of these additions is the passage *
in which the author escorts Pericles from the scene and
characterizes his statesmanship in the light of the subsequent
events which approved its wisdom, showing that if his policy
had been pursued, and if he had had a successor like him-
self, the issue would have been different. Here Thucydides
comments on the Sicilian expedition and refers to the later
events of the war.^

But there is a far longer and more important section in

^ As iv. 48. 5 ; ii. 94. 1 (which was not revised in the light of viii. 96. 1).

^ ii. 65. 5 to end.

* The last sentences of ii. 81 were posterior to the Sicilian expedition.
The notice of Archelaus (413-399 b.c), ii. 100. 2, is a late insertion ; like-
wise iv. 74. 4. E. Meyer has noted that Kprjvai ykp oSiru fi<Tav airrddi, ii. 48. 2,
points to a date after 414 b.c. (schol. Arist Av. 997).

261

262 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

the first Book which must be judged a subsequent insertion;
the historical sketch of the growth of Athens from the year'
478 to 435 B.C. The purpose of this sketch is to exhibit the
growth of the Athenian hegemony, and its justification is
that the true cause of the war, so far as the Spartans were
concerned, was to prevent Athens from increasing that
hegemony still more. Now if Thucydides had grasped this
idea from the first, the appropriate place for his historical
sketch, both logically and chronologically, was at the
beginning of his work, in the Introduction. It would have
formed a natural continuation of the still earlier history
which he had sketched there. Instead, it comes in after
the account of the First Assembly of allies at Sparta,
strangely interrupting the narrative. It serves perhaps an
artistic purpose ; for it afibrds a not unwelcome pause after
the strain of the four speeches in the First Assembly, before
we pass to the immediately following speech of the Corin-
thians in the Second Assembly. But while this consideration
may have determined the place chosen for its insertion, it
was, I believe, an afterthought. There is internal evidence
that it was not originally part of the work.^ For the Intro-
duction, where, as I said, we might have expected to find
such a sketch, actually contains a brief summary of the
relevant features of the period.^ Further, Thucydides had
before him, as he tells us, the Attic chronicle of Hellanicus ;
the defects of that work supplied him with a special motive
for writing a more adequate and accurate narrative ; and
this work of Hellanicus was not published in its earlier form
till 411 B.C., in its later till 404 b.c. And may we not fairly
say that these prolegomena had a fuller justification in a
history of a war ending in the catastrophe of the Athenian
empire than in the narrative of a war ending with the

^ The allusion to the destruction of the long walls (c. 93. 5) cannot be
pressed, as it might have been introduced alone. But it is to be noted
that the Pentekontaeteris is ignored in 1. 146 ; while i. 23, 6 seems to be a
later insertion.

^ Cc. 18, 19. The Introduction (i. 1-93) was evidently written before
414 B.C. as a Preface to the history of the Ten Years' War. A few phrases
may have been changed or added, but not so much as an allusion to the
fall of Athens was introduced.

APPENDIX 268

indecisive Peace of 421 b.c., which left things pretty much
as they were ?

Again, we may reasonably suspect that the speech of
Hermocrates at Gela in 424 b.c. was composed and inserted
after the Sicilian expedition. While it contains remarks
which seem to imply that the later events were before the
author's mind,^ the decisive consideration is that the signifi-
cance of the transactions of 424 b.c. was not apparent till the
events beginning in 415 b.c., and it seems most improbable
that but for those events Thucydides would have emphasized
the Congress of Gela by introducing the speech of Hermocrates.

It is a delicate question whether some of the other
speeches in the early section have been retouched, and reflect
light impinging from what at the time lay in the obscurity
of the future. For instance, in the appeal for peace which
Spartan envoys addressed to the Athenian assembly,^ at the
time of the Sphacterian episode, they hold up an ideal of
conduct which sounds like an ironical reflexion on Sparta"'s
own treatment of Athens twenty years later. To Eduard
Meyer, the funeral oration pronounced by Pericles on those
who had fallen in the first year of the war seems designed
by the author to be in truth a funeral oration on Athens
herself. This is a pretty idea, but I cannot find anything
in the speech necessarily implying that it was written after
the catastrophe. On the other hand, in the later speech
of Pericles, delivered to encourage the Athenians in their
despondency, there is a passage which seems to accuse him
of second sight. There is a vein of pessimism or melancholy,
a note which Pericles would not have struck on such an
occasion, and which the author would hardly have introduced
before the worst had befallen. The speaker observes that
decline and fall (iXaa-a-ova-dai) is a law of nature, and that if
Athens should fall, she will leave a great memory of her
empire, her military successes, and her wealth. This is the
consolation one might proffer after 404 b.c. ; it is not what
would have been said to comfort the citizens in 429 b.c. ; it
is hardly what would have been written in the interval.

1 iv. 60 : allusions to the Athenian expedition and to Melos.
2 iv. 17-20.

264 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

The narrative of the last years of the first war may have
demanded revision for another reason. The author was
absent from Athens ever since he assumed the command
of a fleet in Thrace, and there were documents and informa-
tion which perhaps he had no opportunity to procure vmtil
he returned to his country after his exile. It has been
suggested by KirchhofF that the text of the armistice between
Athens and Sparta in 423 b.c.^ was a subsequent insertion.
It might, of course, have been procured at Sparta. The
text too of the Peace of 421 b.c.^ is inserted in a narrative
which reads rather as if it had been composed without
accurate knowledge of the precise stipulations ; but this
can hardly be pressed. In general it seems probable that all
the verbal copies of documents which appear in the text
would, in the final revision, have been reproduced in the
author's own words.

Although Thucydides re-handled his early work, which
was now to be only part of a much greater work, he never
prepared it finally for publication or gave it the last touches
of revision. Passages remain which exhibit the earlier view
that the war was over in 421 ; and there are difficulties here
and there which are probably due to want of final cor-
rection.

In the transition from the first to the second part of his
history (v. 20-26) there are clear signs of imperfect joining,
due to the successive views which Thucydides entertained of
the war, namely :

(1) Before 414 b.c. : one war of ten years (tov iroXifiov

TovSe, 20. 1) ;

(2) After 414 b.c. : two wars, of which the second began

in this year and was in progress ;

(3) After 404 b.c. : one war of twenty-seven years.

In the first place we can see, I think, how Thucydides
originally concluded his history of the first war, before he
thought of a continuation (414 b.c.). We have two conclu-
sions, c. 20 and c. 24. C. 20 is the natural conclusion ; it im-
mediately follows the Fifty Years'* Peace which terminated the
war. But then cc. 21-24 relate the alliance between the

^ iv. 118-119. 2 V. 18-19.

I

APPENDIX 265

Athenians and Lacedaemonians which followed a little later ;
and a phrase in c. 24 betrays the fact that this was inserted
after 404 B.C. : koI rh depos ^px^ tov evSeKarov erovs. The
eleventh year, of what ? Of the war of twenty-seven years.
After these words there follows : ravra Se ra Se/ca hr^ 6 tt/owtos
TToAe/ios ^vvex/os yevo/ievos yeypaTrraL. Obviously this is (1) out
of place here ; it ought to come in c. 20 after the Peace ;
and (2) in point of grammar, raura is not intelligible, for no
ten years have been mentioned in the context. But if it
came originally in c. 20 (whether after the last sentence or
after the first ; in both positions ravra would be equally in
place), it was considerably altered, for the point of ^wcxws
is the contrast between the Ten Years' War and the
Twenty-seven Years' War. But the alteration was made
hastily and provisionally ; and rain-a, which betrays it, shows
the lack of a careful final revision.

Cc. 25, 26 form the introduction to the second part of
the history. C. 26 declares itself to have been written after
404 B.C. C. 25 mai/ have been written while Thucydides
still considered the second part to be the history of a second
war ; but there is no proof of this hypothesis.^ On the other
hand, the introduction of w/jwtw, -n-pwros at the end of the
first part (20 ad Jin., 24 ad Jin.) might naturally have been
made when he began his continuation after 414 b.c.

It is an interesting philological problem to penetrate into
the secrets of the historian's workshop, but here I have been
only concerned to illustrate the important facts that the
first part of the work was re-handled and that in some parts
it needed further revision.

^ It involves the corollary that the words Kal t^v (vfiftaxiav 'Aerjvaiwy

(25. 1) were subsequently added, concurrently with the insertion of
21-24.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[This selected list comprises works which have been of
direct use, great or slight, to the author for the preparation
of these lectures. Editions of the historians are not included
except in one or two special cases.]

1. General

Bauer, A. Die Forschungen zur griechischen Geschichte

1888-1898. Munich, 1899.
Beloch, J. Griechische Geschichte, vols, i.-iii. Strassburg,

1893-1904.
Bruns, I. Das litterarische Portrat der Griechen im fiinften

und vierten Jahrhundert v. Chr. Berlin, 1896.
Bruns, I. Die Personlichkeit in der Geschichtschreibung der

Alten. Berlin, 1898.
BiJDiNGER, M. Die Universalhistorie im Altertum. Vienna,

1895.
BusoLT, G. Griechische Geschichte, vols, i.-iii. Gotha,

1893-1904.
Cauer, F. Thukydides und seine Vorganger. Historische

Zeitschrift, 83, 385 sqq. 1899.
Creuzer, G. F. Die historische Kunst der Griechen in ihrer

Entstehung und Fortbildung. (323 pp.) Leipzig,

1803.
DioNYsius OF Haltcarnassus. Opera rhetorica. (Especially,

Uepl OovKv8i8ov, Hepl rdv QovkvSiSov tStw/iarwv, Ilphs

UoiMTT-qiov Fe/xivov cttmttoA,^, and the fragments of Uepl

/Ai/j«Jcrecos.)
Drerup, E. Die historische Kunst der Griechen. Jahr-

blicher fiir klassische Philologie, Supplementband xxvii.

443 sqq. 1902.

267

268 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

I

GoMPERZ, Th. Griechische Denker, vol. i. Leipzig, 1893,
etc. ]

Leo, F. Die griechisch-romische Biographic. Leipzig,
1901.

Mahaffy, J. P. History of Classical Greek Literature, vol.
ii., Parts I. and II., Ed. 3. London, 1890.

Mahaffy, J. P. Greek Life and Thought, 323-146 b.c
Ed. 2. London, 1896.

Meyer, E. Geschichte des Altertums, vols, ii.-v. Stutt-
gart, 1893-1902.

Meyer, E. Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, I. Zu^
alteren griechischen Geschichte. Halle, 1892.

MUller, C. Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, vols, i.-iv.
Paris, 1841-51.

Muller, C. Scriptores rerum Alexandri Magni (along with
Arrian's works, in the Didot series). Paris, 1846.

Murray, Gilbert. History of Ancient Greek Literature,!
London, 1897.

NoRDEN, E. Die antike Kunstprosa. Leipzig, 1898.

Peter, H. Die geschichtliche Litteratur iiber die romische
Kaiserzeit bis Theodosius I. und ihre Quellen, 2 vols.
Leipzig, 1897.

ScHiRMEisTER, H. Charaktcristische Erscheinungen in der
antiken Geschichtschreibung. Pyritz, 1896.

Seeck, O. Die Entwicklung der antiken Geschichtschrei-
bung und andere populare Schriften. Berlin, 1898.

Stahl, Th. Ueber den Zusammenhang der altesten grie-
chischen Geschichtschreibung mit der epischen Dichtung.
Jahrbiicher fiir klassische Philologie, 153, 369 sqq. 1896. |

SusEMiHL, F. Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der
Alexandrinerzeit, 2 vols. Leipzig, 1892.

Wachsmuth, C. Einleitung in das Studium der alten Ge-
schichte. Leipzig, 1895.

Wachsmuth, C. Ueber Ziele und Methoden der griechischen
Geschichtschreibung. (Rectoratsrede.) Leipzig, 1897.

WipPRECHT, F. Zur Entwicklung der rationalistischen
Mythendeutung bei den Griechen, i. Tiibingen, 1902.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 269

2. Special
Acusilaus.

KoEDT, A. De Acusilao. Basel, 1903
Antiochus,

WoLFFLiN, J. Antiochus von Syrakus uhd Coelius
Antipater. Leipzig, 1872.
Aristotle.

Seeck, O. Quellenstudien zu des Aristoteles Verfas-
sungsgeschichte Athens, Beitrage zur alten Ge-
schichte (Klio), iv. 164 sqq. and 270 sqq. 1904,
Wii^MowiTz - MoLLENDORFF, U. VON, Aristoteles und
Athen., 2 vols, Beriin, 1893.
Craterus.

Keil, B. Der Perieget Heliodonis von Athen. Hermes,

XXX. 199 sqq. 1894.
Krech, J, De Crateri "^T/e^io-jnaTtov o-vva-yoiyi^ et de locis
aliquot Plutarchi ex ea petitis. Greifswald, 1888.
Cratippus.

Cratippus. Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part V. (ed. Grenfell

and Hunt), No. 842. London, 1908.
De Sanctis, Gaetano. L"" Attide di Androzione e un
papiro di Oxyrhynchos. Turin, 1908
Dionysius of Miletus.

Lehmann, C. F. Dionysios von Milet. Beitrage zur
alten Geschichte (Klio), ii. 334 sqq. and iii. 330 sqq.
Ephorus.

Schwartz, E. Article "Ephoros" in Pauly-Wissowa,
Recdencyklopddie.
Hecataeus.

Prasek, J. V. Hekataios als Herodots Quelle zur Ge-
schichte Vorderasiens. Beitrage zur alten Geschichte
(Klio), iv. 193 sqq. 1904.
Hellanicus.

KuLLMER, H. Hellanikos, Jahrbiicher fiir klassische

Philologie, Supplementband xxvii, 455 sqq. 1902.

[Includes a new edition and redistribution of the

fragments.]

Lehmann- Haupt, C. F. Hellanikos, Herodot, Thuky-

dides. Klio, vi. 127 sqq. 1906.

m

270 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS ^

Herodotus.

Bauer, A. Die Entstehung des herodotischen Gre-

schichtswerkes. Berlin, 1878.
Hauvette, a. Herodote historien des guerres mediques.

Paris, 1894.
KiRCHHOFF, A. Die Entstehungszeit des herodotiscb

Geschichtswerkes, Ed. 2. Berlin, 1878.
Kracsse, R. De Panyasside. Hanover, 1891.
Lehmanx, C. F, Die historische Semiramis und

Herod ot. Beitrage zur alten Geschichte (Klio),

i. 256 sqq. 1901.
Macan, R. W. Herodotus, Books iv. to vi. 2 vols.

1895. Books vii. to ix. 2 vols. 1908.
Plutarch, Uepl rrjs 'HpoBorov KaKorjOiias. In vol. 5 of

the Moralia ed. Bernardakis.
Schwartz, E. Quaestiones lonicae. Rostock, 1891.
Wiedemann, A. Herodots zweites Buch mit sachlich^i

Beraerkungen. Leipzig, 1890.
Isocrates.

ScALA, R. VON. Isokrates und die Geschichtschreibung.

(Vortrag auf der 41. Versammlung deutscher Philo-

logen.) Leipzig, 1892.
Pherecydes of Leros.

Bertsch, H. Pherekydeische Studien. Tauberbischo

heim, 1898.
Polybius.

Cuntz, O. Polybius und sein Werk. Leipzig, 1902.
Davidson, J. Strachan. Selections from Polybi

Oxford, 1888.
La-Roche, P. Charakteristik von Polybius. Leipzig,

1857.
NissEN, H. Die Oekonomie der Geschichte des Poly-
bios. Rheinisches Museum, xxvi. 241 sqq. 1871.
ScALA, R. VON. Die Studien des Polybios, i. Stutt-
gart, 1890.
Thommen, R. Abfassungszeit der Geschichten des

Polybios. Hermes, xx. 196 sqq. 1885,
Wunderer, C. Die psychologischen Anschauungen des

Historikers Polybios. Erlangen, 1905.

1
I

BIBLIOGRAPHY 271

Theopompus.

DiDYMus. De Demosthene Commenta. Ed. Diels and

Schubart in Berliner Klassikertexte, i. Berlin,

1904, and in Teubner's Volumina Aegyptiaca.

Leipzig, 1904.
Thucydides.

BusoLT, G. Thukydides und der themistokleische

Mauerbau. Beitrage zur alten Geschichte (Klio),

V. 255 sqq. 1905.
CoRNFORD, F. M. Thucydides Mythistoricus. London

1907. '

CwiKLiNSKi, L. Quaestiones de tempore quo Thucy-
dides priorem historiae suae partem composuerit.

Berlin, 1873.
Herbst, L. Zur Urkunde in Thukydides v. 47.

Hermes, xxvii. 374 sqq. 1891.
HoLZAPFEL, L. Doppelte Relationen im viii. Buche des

Thukydides. Hermes, xxix. 435 sqq. 1894.
KiRCHHOFF, A. Thukydides und sein Urkundenma-

terial. Berlin, 1895.
KoRNEMANN, E. Thukydides und die romische His-

toriographie. Philologus, Ixiii. 148 sqq.
Meves, W. Untersuchungen iiber das achte Buch

der thukydideischen Geschichte. Brandenburg

a. H., 1865.
Nissen, H. Der Ausbruch des peloponnesischen

Krieges. Historische Zeitschrift Ixiii. (N. F.

xxvii.) 385 sqq. 1890.
Stein, H. Zur Quellenkritik des Thukydides. Rheini-

sches Museum Iv. 531 sqq. 1900.
Steup, J. Thukydides, Antiochos und die angebliche

Biographie des Hermokrates [a refutation of Stein's

paper]. lb. Ivi. 443 sqq. 1901.
WiLAMowrrz-MoLLENDORFF, U. VON. Memoriae oblite-

ratae. Hermes, xi. 294 sqq. 1876.
WiLAMowiTZ-MoLLENDORFF, U. VON. Die Thukydidcs-

legende. Hermes, xii. 326 sqq. 1877.
Timaeus.

Geffcken. Timaios' Geographie des Westens. Berlin,

1892.

INDEX

Achaeans, Polybius on, 202, 216,
217

Acton, Lord, 232

Acusilaus of Argos, mythogra-
pher, 18, 19-21, 25, 103

Aegina, miracle of statues in, 68

Aeschines, Dialogues of, 180

Aeschylus, 66, 68, 109

African us, Sextus Julius, 237

Agathocles, books on 168, 169,
172

Agesilaus, 162, 153

oWa in Thucydides, 93, 9-t, in
Polybius, 200

Alcibiades, conjectural relations
with Thucydides (Kirchhoff),
84 ; treatment of, by Thucy-
dides, 88, 120, 127 sq. ;
forcible style, 109

Alcidamas, 170

Alcmaeonids, Herodotus on, 61,
64

Alexander the Great, 159, 162;
Hegesias on, 171 ; influence of
his conquests on historio-
graphy, 176 sqq., 178

Alexandria, libraries, 187 ; anti-
quarianism at, 187 sqq.

Ammianus Marcellinus, 234

Anacyclosis. See under Cyclical

Anaxagoras, 129

Anaximander, 11, 15, 205

Auaximenes, historian, 162

Androtion, 156, 179, 183

Annus, magnus, 254

Anticleides, 183

Antiochus of Commagene, 170

Antiochus of Syracuse, 26 sq., 103

Antiphon, 103, 120 sq., 144, 179,
180

Antiquarianism, 188 sqq.

Aiitisthenes, 180

273

Antisthenes of Rhodes, 216

Apollodorus, his useof Hellanicus,
30

Apollonius of Rhodes, 168

Appian, 221

Aratus, Memoirs of, 176, 233

Archidamus, 91, 113

Aperi,, 119, 144

Aristeas of Proconnesus, 7, 26

Aristobulus, Memoirs of, 176, 176

Aristophanes, 99, 122

Aristotle, 179 ; 182 sqq., 246

Arrian, 176

Artaxerxes I., reference to, in
Herodotus, 37

Artemisium, battle of; incident
not recorded by Herodotus,
26

Asconius, 234

Asianic style, 169 sqq., two kinds
of, 170 sq. ; example, 171 sq.

Assur-bani-pal, his history of his
own reign, 3

Astyochus, Spartan general, 84

'ABrjvalwi' TToXiTfla, anonymous, 179

Athens, partiality of Herodotus to,
62 sqq. ; Herodotus at, 36, 65,
69 ; Athenian tradition of Pe---
sian war, 66 ; Lectures HL
and IV. passim, 155 ; educa-
tional and literary centre,
161, 167

Atthidographers, 183

Atticism, 148, 170, 206

Augustine, St., 237, 239

Augustus, Emperor, 227, 230

Berard, V., 7, 100, 219
Bertsch, H., 19, and Bibliography
Biography, 147, 153*?., 2:54
Bt'oy, pregnant meaning of, 163,
cp. 187

T

274 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

Bismarck; 143

Blass, F., 156

Brasidas, 141

Bruus, I. , 117, and Bibliography

Buckle, H. T., 256

Burrows, R. M., 86

Cadmus of Miletus, evidence for,

14-15 ; 16 ; 25
Caesar, Julius, Commentaries of,

176, 232 sq.
Caligula, Emperor, 227
Callimachus, poet, 168
Cannae, battle of, 197
Carian population in Aegean

islands, 104
Carthage, 208, 217, 218
Carthage, New, 86, 194
Cato, M. Porcius, the Censor, 225,

226, 229
Cauer, V., 119, and Bibliography
Cavour, 143
Charinus, decree of, 87
Charon of Lampsacus, 21 sq., 23,

26 note, 29, 67
Cheirocracy, 205

Christian construction of world-
history, 237 *97-
Chronology, of early historians,

27 sqq. ; uncertainty of early,
32 ; want of a fixed era, ib. ;
of Herodotus, 72 sq. ; of
Thucydides, 105 sq.; Olymp-
iads, 167, 194

Chrysippus, a determinist, 204

Cicero, 160, 221, 233, 248

Cimmerians, invasion of, 7

Cimon, 75, 77

Civilisation. See under History

Claudius, Emperor, 229

Cleidemus, 183

Cleitarchus of Colophon, 176

Cleon, his speech on Mytilene,

115 .v^., 137 ; treatment by

Thucydides, 118, 123
Comte, Auguste, 256
Condorcet, 256
Conon, 157

Corbulo, Memoirs of, 176
Corinth, her instigation of

Peloponnesian war, 96 sq.
Cornelius Nepos, 230
Cornford, F. M., 92, 100, 123,

124, and Bibliography
Crater us, 189

Cratinus, 99

Cratippus, 155 sqq., 165

Crete, thalassocracy of, 104

Critias, 179

Critobulus, 149

Croesus, interview with Solon,

44, 57 ; pyre of, 58
Ctesias, 166

Cuntz, O., 194, and Bibliography
Curiositas, antiquarianism, 188
Cyclical theory of history, 206

sq., 248
Cyclopes, legend of their death,

treated by Pherecydes, 18

Damastes, 26

Davidson, J. Strachan, 194, and
Bibliography

Deiochus, historian, 26 note, 26

Delbruck, H., 198

Delos, digression of Thucydides
on, 89 sq.

Delphi, legends emanating from,
10 ; miraculous deliverance
from Persians, 59 sq.

Demetrius Phalereus, 187 ; hi*
Ilepi T&x.V^, 200 sq.

Democles, 25, 26

Democritus, 130

Demon, 183

Dexippus, 148

Dicaearchus, 187

Didymus, Commentary on DenUH
sthenes, 183

Diodorus, use of Hellanicus by,
30 note ; used Timaeus, 168, J
used Poseidonius, 221 ; Uni- j
versal History of, 235 sq. I

Diodotus, 115, 137 1

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, on '
Charon, 22 note, on the style
of the early historians, 25 ; j
list of early historians, 26
note ^ ; on Herodotus, 42 ; on j
Thucydides, 90, 102, 106 ; on J
the style of Thucydides, 110 '
sq., 113 sq., 148; charges
Thucydides with want of
patriotism, 131 sq. ', on ex-
aggerated admiration of
Thucydides, 146; on Cra-
tippus, 157, 158 ; on Philistos,
159 ; on Theopompus, 166 ; 1
on Atticism, 206 ; his History,
226

INDEX

275

Dionysius of Miletus, 22-24 ; sole
fragment of, 22 note *, 67

Dionysius I. of Syracuse, 168,
i59, 160

Dionysus, god distinguished from
man, 48

Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), 143

Dorian institutions, Plato on, 186

Drerup, E., 181

Duris, 172 sqq., 209

Eclipses (solar) in Thucydides,
129

Egypt : mythical traditions com-
pared with those of Greece,
14, 48 ; Athenian expedition
to, 41 ; Hecataeus and
Herodotus on, 60 sq.

Ephorus, 162 sqq. ; his history
rather quasi - national than
universal, 163 ; rhetorical
features, 164 ; 167 ; 211

Epics, the Greek : regarded as
history by early Greeks, 2
sqq.; corpus of Trojan epics
(poets of the epic cycle), 6 ;
genealogical epics, ib. ; local,
6 ; geographical, 7 ; influence
of, 17

Epidaurus, 87

Eratosthenes, 168, 189, 262

Eucrates, 122

Eudemus, historian, 25

Eudemus, philosopher, 206

Euemerus, 21

Eugammon (''cyclic" poet), 15

Eugeon (Euagon), 25 note ^, 29

Eumelus, Corinthiaca, 6, 15

Euripides, 153, 212, 218

Europa, legend of, rationalised, 19

Eusebius, 237

Exegetai, 183

Fabius Pictor, Q., 197, 224
Fiction, history as supplying place

of, 175 sq., 241
Flaminius, agrarian law of, 208
Fortune. See Tyche
Fourier, Charles, 266
Frederick the Great, 225
Freeman, E. A., 62, 126, 169

Galilei, Galileo dei, 262
Geffcken, J. , 168, and Bibliography
Generations, reckoning by, 28

Gibbon, E., 47, 106; on Herod-
otus, 67 ; 226

Goligher, W. A., 156

Gomperz, Th., 15, 129, 206

Gorgias, style. 111, 114, 124, 170 ;
166

Gracchi, revolutionary movement
of the, 208

Greek language in the Roman
empire, 224

Grenfell, B. P., and Hunt, W. S.,
67, 99, 156, 156, 158

Grundy, G. B., 70, 86

Guicciardini, 248

Gutschmid, A. von, 25, 26

Hannibal, 213, 214, 217

Hecataeus of Miletus, founder of
history, 11, 15, 17, 34; his
works and travels, 11-18 ;
rationalism, 13-14 ; influence
on mythography, 18 - 21 ;
chronology, 28 ; source of
Herodotus, 49 sq.,QQ, 69 ; on
Egypt, 49 sq., genealogy of,
60

Hegesias of Magnesia, 169 sq.,
171 sq.

Helen, Herodotus on, 47, 62

Hellanicus of Lesbos, 27 sqq., 88,
183, 262

Heracleides, prince of Mylasae,
24, 26, 69

Heracleitus, 205

Heracles, Herodotus on, 46 sq., 48

Herder, 240

Hermocrates, 121, 136

Herodes Atticus, irepiL woXirelas,
wrongly ascribed to, 181 note

Herodorus of Heraclea, 20, 21

Herodotus :

life, 86 sq. ; travels, 37 ; visit
to Euxine regions, 41 ; at
Plataea, 70 ; rewarded by
Athenians, 65
work, artistic plan of, 38 sq. ;
genesis of, 39 sq. ; geograph-
ical excursus, 40 sq. ; epic
features, 41 sq., 87 ; speeches,
42 sq. ; his theme, 44 ; large-
ness of his conception, 45 ;
historical anecdotes, 66 sqq. ;
chronology, 28, 72 sq. ; un-
fulfilled promise, 40; Assyrian
logoi, ib.

276 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

Herodotus — contd.
debts to Hecataeus, 12, 13, 48,
49 sqq. ; criticism on Heca-
taeus, 50 sq. ; sources for
history of Persian invasion,
66 sqq. ; influenced by Athen-
ian drama, 68 ; no traces of
sophistic influence on, 54, 56 ;
Ionian stories about Persia,
64 sqq. ; on Aristeas, 7 ;
omits incident at Artemisium
recorded by Sosylus, 25
maxims of historical criticism,
69 sq. ; errors about Egypt
and Babylon, 70 sq. ; mis-
orients Thermopylae, 70 ; in-
competence in accounts of
warfare, 72
anti-Ionian spirit, 61 sqq. ; phil-
Athenian sentiments, 62 sqq. ;
on Pericles and Alcmaeonids,
64 ; treatment of Themis-
tocles, ib.
scepticism and rationalism, 46
sqq. ; credulity and incred-
ulity, 58 sqq. ; irony, 47 ;
distinction between age of
gods and heroic age, 48 ;
belief in superhuman control
of events, 68, 124 sq. ; on
oracles, 129
on antagonism of Asia and
Europe, 52 sqq. ; on Egypt,
60*?., 70
alluded to by Thucydides, 103 ;
canonized, 151
Hesiod, scheme of successive

ages, 6, 187
Hieronymus of Cardia, 177, 190
Himerius, 170
Hippias of Elis, 32
Historia Augusta, 235
History and historiography :
origin of word (Ionic iffroplri), 16
accuracy, 81, 197, 209
" ancient " and '' modern "
Greek history, 17, 164, 190 ;
ancient (mythography), 18
sqq., 33, 46
antiquarian history, 188 sqq.,

246 sq.
causes, historical, 93 sq., 200

sqq.

civilisation, history of, 45, 103,
185 sqq., 193, 199

History and historiography — n

constitutional history, 182 sqq.,
206 sq.

contemporary history, 12, 18,
22 sq., 78, 82 sq.

critical history ; principles of
criticism in Herodotus, 69
sqq. ; Thucydides first really
critical historian, 74

cyclical theory of history, 205
sq., 248

dogma and history, 238

epics regarded as history, 2

fiction, history serving as, 176

Graeco-Romau historiography,
234 sq.

individuals, their role in history,
212

influence on historiography of:
Ionian science, 9 sqq., 34;
Persia, 11, 34 ; Sophists, 76,
77 ; rhetoric, 161 sqq. , 209 sq.,
228 ; Alexander's conquests,
176 sq., 177 sq. ; political
speculation, 179 sqq. ; Peri-
patetics, 187 sqq.; Stoics,
204 sqq., 235 »9., 238

Ionian school of history, 21
sqq.

national history, 226

origin of history in Ionia (at
Miletus), 11 sqq.

perspective of history, 254

philosophy of history, 239 sq.

political history (founded by
Thucydides), 78, 150

pragmatical historj', 199, 243
sqq.

progress in history, 248, 255 sqq.

psychology, in historiography,
107 sq., 147, 154, 213 sq., 233

realistic history, 173

relativity, historical, 250 sqq.

Roman historiography, 224 sqq.

scientific, Greek historians not,
147, 258

speeches : historiographical con-
ventions as to, 229 sq. ; in
Herodotus, 42 sq. ; in Thucy-
dides, 108 sqq. ; in Xenophon,
152; in Ephorus, 164; in
Polybius, 217 sq. ; Cratippns
on, 157

summary of development of
Greek historiography, 240 sq.

INDEX

277

History and historiography — cont.
universal history : (Herodotus),
46 ; (Ephorus), 162 sq., 199 ;
(Polybius), 193, 199; under
Roman empire, 235 sqq. ;
Christian construction of,
237 sqq.

Holzapfel, L., 84, and Biblio-
graphy

Homer, prestige of, 2 ; authority
of, 238 ; historical back-
ground, 4 ; archaism, 6 ; geo-
graphical interest in Odyssey,
7 ; sceptical spirit in late
parts of Iliad and Odyssey, 9 ;
influence on Herodotus, 41
sqq., 45 ; treatment by Thucy-
dides, 104 ; Eratosthenes on,
189, 218 sq. ; geography of,
218 sq.

Howard, Albert, 227

Hunt, W. S. See Grenfell

Hyginus, 234

Hyperbolus, 121 sqq.

Intaphemes, story of wife of, 54
Ion, memoir writer, 88, 103, 210
Ionia, sceptical spirit in, 8 ; science
and philosophy of, 9 ; history
of, 23 sq. ; Herodotus on, 62 ;
works of Ionian geographers,
69
Isocrates, Evagoras, and influence
on biography, 153 ; influence
on history, 161 sqq. ; Pane-
gyric, 180 note
tarup, 16

Jerome, 237

Josephus, 221

Justin, epitomizer of Trogus, 236

Kaerst, J., 178

Kirchhoff, A., 264, and Biblio-
graphy
Kornemann, E., 235
Korte, A. , 32 note
Kromayer, 198
KuUmer, H., 29, and Bibliography

Laomedon, legend of, rationalised,

20
Lehmann-Haupt, C, 30, 68, 71,

and Bibliography
Leibniz, 256

Leo, F., 154, 234, and Biblio-
graphy

Libanius, 170

Livy, 221, 226 sqq., 229

Logographoi or logopoioi= ■prose
writers, 15-16 ; list of early
historical, 25 note ^ ; use of
term by Thucydides, 43

Longinus, on Herodotus, 42

Lucian, 149, 151

Lycophron, poet, 168

Lygdamis, 36

Lyons, bronze tablet of (speech of
Claudius), 229

Lysicles, 122

Macan, R. W., on Herodotus, 7,
37, 38, 39, 40, 70, and
Bibliography

Macedonian conquests, Demetrius
on, 201 ; fall of Macedonia^
191, 201

Macedonian hegemony, 161, 166

Machiavelli, 142 sqq., 248

Mahaffy, J. P., 6, 32, 43, 110,
223, and Bibliography

Manning, Cardinal, 238

Megara, Athenian decrees con-
cerning, 87 ; embroilment
with Athens, its connexion
with Peloponnesian war, 95
sqq. ; geographical import-
ance, 100

Melanthius, 183

Melesagoras, 26 note

Melos, conquest by Athens, 138
sqq.

Memoirs, historical ; earliest, 176;
178 ; 232 sq.

Merope, land of, 166

Meyer, E., 63, 64, 156, 261, 263,
and Bibliography

Miletus, centre of Ionian culture, ,
178

fji.iix7)(ns, l72

Minos, 104

Mithra, in Herodotus, 71 note

Mommsen, Th., 220

Muciauus, 190

Murray, Gilbert, 4, 9, 21, 146

Myths, later type of (7th, 6th
centuries), 9, 56 sq.
comparative mytliology, 48

Mylilene, revolt against Athens,
115, 139

278 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

Naupactia, 6

Nearchus, 176

Nicias,Thucydideau portrait of, 119

Nicole, J,, 180

Nissen, H., 92, 194, 195, and

Bibliography
Nitocris (Nebuchadnezzar), 71
Norden, E., 170, 171, and Biblio-

giaphy

Oecumene, idea of, 178
Oenobius, decree of, 76
Olympiads, reckoning by, 168, 194
Orbi^ terrarum, 178
Orpheus, treatment of, by Phere-

cydes, 18
Otanes, conspiracy of, 65, 66

Palaephatus, 21

Pan, son of Penelope, 48

Panaetius, 204, 221, 222

Panyassis, poet, 26, 36

Pausanias, digression of Thucy-
dides on, 89

Peisistratids, digressionof Thucy-
dides on, 89

Pentekontaeteris, the, 105, 262

Pergamon, 188

Pericles, expedition to the Pontus,
41 ; funeral oration in 439
B.C., 63 ; Herodotus on, 64 ;
private life ignored by Thucy-
dides, 87 ; detached attitude
of Thucydides towards, 95,
133 sqq. ; speeches of, in
Thucydides, 113 #79. , 133 sqq. ;
idealism, 115 sq. ; character-
ized by Thucydides, 120, 127 ;
not \a/j,Trp6s, 128 ; his per-
sonality not revealed in
Thucydides, 147

Peripatetic school, influence on
history, 1 87 sqq. ; on Polybius,
200*77., 246

Perseus, Herodotus on, 46

Persia : influence of Persian con-
quest of Ionia on the rise
of history, 11, 22, 34, 240 ;
Ionian stories about, 54 *77. ;
Persian war, treatment of, by
early historians, 22 ^77. ; by
Herodotus, 66 *77. ; conquest
of Persia by Alexander, 175

Peter, H. , 234, and Bibliog^phy

Phanodemus, 183 note

Pherecydes (of Leros), mytho*^
grapher, 18-19, 21

Pherecydes (of Syros), 15

Philip II, of Macedon, 166

Philip III. of Macedon, 213, 214

Philistus, 159 sq., 167

Philochorus, 183

Philosophy, influence on history,
179 sqq., 219. See under Peri-
patetic school, and Stoicism

Philosophy of History, 239 sq.

Phoronis, h

Phylarchus, 173, 209

Pindar, on custom, 55 ; on forms
of constitution, 56 ; 218

Plataea, Herodotus at, 70 ; siege
of, 85, 86

Plato, 179 ; Gorgias, 180 ; on
origins of civilisation, 184
^77. ; on cycle of constitu-
tions, 185, 205

Plutarch, on Herodotus, 54, 65 ;
biographies, 154 ; on Cra^
tippus, 155 ; his Consolation to
Apollonius, 200

Polemon of Ilion, 190

iroXireia, in Athens, c. 411 b.c.,
135 ; TrArpios, 181

Political literature, in last part of
fifth century b.c, 179 ^77.

iroXvtrpayfwffJuvrf (antiquarianism),
188

Polybius :

life, 191 *77. ; travels, 192,

198 ; at New Carthage, 194
work, first design of, 192 ;
second plan, 193 ; additional
insertions, 193 sq. ; supposed
symmetry of, 195 sq. ; chrono-
logy, 194 ; speeches, 217 sq. ;
narrative power, 217 ; style,
218 ; Mommsen on, 220
on requisites of historian, 197 '
sq. ; on accuracy, 197 ; de-
nounces rhetoric, 209, and \
gossip, 210 ; didactic, 211 ;
on patriotism, 215 ; fair-
mindedness of, 215, sq. ; on
Fabius, 197 ; on Aratus, 198 ;
on Ephorus, 199 ; on Phylar-
chus, 173, 209 ; on Homer,
218 sq.
topography, 198 ; on Lake
Trasimene, 70 ; on New :
Carthage, 86, 194

INDEX

279

Polybius — contd.

pragmatism, 199, 243, 247;
on causes, 200 sqq. ; on Tyche,
200 sqq. ; cyclical theory of
history, 205 sq., 248 ; theory
of constitutions, 206 sq. ;
views on religion, 216 ; on
national character, 212 ; treat-
ment of individuals, 213 sq. ;
interest in psychology, 214
sq. ; Peripatetic influence on,
200 sqq. ; Stoic influence on,
204 sqq.
on Roman institutions, 196,
207 sq. ; on Gracchan move-
ment, 208
comparison with Thucydides,
209 sqq.

Polycrates, story of ring of, 58

Pompeius Trogus, 236 sq.

Pompey, 221

Poseidonius, 221 sqq., 227

Potidaea, 97 sq.

Pragmatical, meaning of term in
Polybius, 199. See under
History

Prasek, J. V. , 13, and Bibliography

Procopius, 148

Progress, idea of, 199, 256 sqq.

irpSipacris, in Thucydides, 93, 94

Ptolemy I., Soter, Memoirs of,
175, 176, 187

Ptolemy II., Philadelphus, 187

Publicists : early poetical (e.g.
Solon), 3

Purser, L. C, 160 note

Pylos and Sphacteria, episode of,
in Thucydides, 85, 86, 126

Pyrrhus, 168; Memoirs of, 176,
233

Pythagoreans, cyclical theory of,
205 sq.

Ranke, L. von, 259

Reinach, S., 68

Rhetoric, influence on history,
161, 167; Isocratean, 164,
169 ; Asianic, 170 sqq. ; Greek
love of, 174 sq. ; at Rome,
228, 233

Rhodes, 221, 222

Roberts, W. Rhys, 166

Rome : Roman constitution, 207
sq. ; decline of Rome, 208 ;
historiography of, Lect. VII.

Saint-Simon, Claude H. de, 266

Sallust, 225 sq., 227, 228, 230, 231

Samos, Herodotus at, 36; Duris
on, 172

Sanctis, G. de, 156, and Biblio-
graphy

Scala, R. von, 200, 201, and
Bibliography

Schulz, O. Th., 235

Schwartz, E., 21, 162, 163, and
Bibliography

Scione, 139

Scipio Aemilianus, 198, 204, 208

Scipio Africanus, 213, 214

Scylax of Caryanda, 24 sq., 176

Seeck, O. , 29, and Bibliography

Sellasia, battle of, 198

Semiramis, 71

Sicily, Antiochus on, 26 ; Thucy-
dides on early history of, 89 ;
Athenian expedition to, 126
sq. ; Timaeus on, 168

Simonides, 218

Sitalces, digression of Thucydides
on, 89

Socrates, pupils of, 153

Solon, date of his visit to Ionia,
57 ; his elegies, 3, 180, 183

Sophistic movement, 54, 66, 76,
77, 153

Sophocles, 110

Sosylus, historian, 26

Sparta, Thucydides at, 76 ; reason
for entering on Peloponnesian
war, 94 sqq.; war party at,
97 ; constitution of, 207

Stahl, Th. , 42, and Bibliography

Stesichorus, 8

Stesimbrotus, 88, 103, 180, 210

Stoicism, influence on Polybius,
204 ; on Universal History,
235

Strabo, 221

Suetonius, 230, 231, 234

Susemihl, H., 196, and Biblio-
graphy

Syracuse, 76

Tacitus, 228 sqq., 264

Theagenes of Rhegium, 10 note

Thebes, 171

Themistocles, treatment of, by
Herodotus, 64; by Thucy-
dides, ib., 89, 128

Theognis, 3, 180

280 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

Theophrastus, 172, 190
Theopompus, 165 sqq. ; Oxyrhyn-
chus, fragment ascribed to,
by some, 156 ; condemned by
Duris, 173 ; 180
Theramenes, 121, 181
Thirty Years' Peace (445 b.c),

instrument of, 85
Thrace, Thucydides in, 75, 76 ;

89
Thrasymachus, 179, 181
Thucydides :

life, 75 sqq. ; stages and changes
in composition of his work,
79 sqq. (cp. Appendix) ;
initiates true contemporary
history, 78 ; founder of poli-
tical history, ih. ; his work a
great step in historiography,
147

influence of Sophists on, 75, of
Athenian empire on, 76 sq.

principle of accuracy, 81 sq. ;
principle of relevance, 87 sq.,
100 ; omissions, 86 sq.

digressions, 88 sqq. ; limitations
of, 146 sq.

view of the purpose of historio-
graphy, 81, 242 sq., 258 sq. ;
renounced popularity, 167

collection of information, 83
sqq. ; use of documents, 84
sq. ; reference to an in-
scription as written d/j.vdpois
ypdfx/jLa<np, 31 ; references to
Herodotus, 81, 103, 90 ; re-
ferences to older works, 103 ;
on Hellanicus, ib., 104 sq. ;
on ancient piracy, 252

artistic method, 90 sq.;
dramatic method, 108, 117
sqq. ; differences in his style,
obscurity, etc., 110 sqq. ;
style influenced by drama,124

speeches, 99 sq., 108 sqq. ; of
Pericles, 113, 133 sqq.
(Epitaphios), lUsq., 133, 136,
146 sq. ; of Cleon, 109, 115
sq. ; of Diodotus, 115, 137 ;
of Corcyrean envoy, 94 ; of
Corinthians, 96 s^., 116, 117;
of Alcibiades, 109 ; dialogue
of Archidamus and Plataeans,
113 ; Melian dialogue. 111,
113, 138 sqq. Cp. Appendix

Thucydides — contd.

reflexions on civil sedition (in
connexion with Corcyra),
113, 145

treatment of chronology, 73, 105
sq. ; of economic facts, 91
sq. ; sketch of early history
of Greece, 102 sqq. ; of the
Pentekontaeteris , 104 sq. ; on
the heroic age, 103

on the causes of the Pelopon-
nesian war, 92 sqq. ; use ofairla
and Trp6(pa(ns, 93 ; on general
course of the war and causes
of collapse of Athens, 124
sqq. ; on the Athenian
empire, 135 sqq. ; on Tycke,
125 ; on oracles, 129 ; charged
with want of patriotism, 131
sqq.

on the logic of policy, 138, 140
sq., 232 ; comparison with
Machiavelli, 143 sqq.

topographical mistakes, 86 ;
errors in text of, ib.

Book v., 85, 264 *g. ; Book viii.,
84, 85

on ITiemistocles, 64, 120, 121,
128 ; view of Pericles, 115,
116, 121, 127 sq., 132 sqq. ;
on Cleon, 118, 123 ; on Nicias,
118 sq. ; on Alcibiades, 120,
127 sq. ; on Antiphon, 120
sq.; on Hermocrates, 121 ; on
Theramenes, ib. ; on Hyper-
bolus, 121 sqq. ; comparison
of Athens and Sparta, 116

influence of, on historiography,
148 sq., 150; on Philistus,
159 sq. ; imitators of, 150 ;
canonized, 151 ; continuations
of his work, 152, 154 ; com-
pared with Cratippus, 157 ;
compared with Polybius,
209 sqq.
Tiberius, Emperor, 231
Timaeus, 167 sqq. ; popularity of,
172 ; antiquarianism, 188 ;
studies by Polybius, 193, 194,
195, 198, 209, 211, 217;
influence on Sallust, 226
Trajan, history of Dacian war,

176
Trasimene, battle of, 227
Trogus. See Pompeius Trogus

INDEX

281

Trojan war, origin of, according
to Acusilaus, 19 ; used as an
era, 32 ; origin of, in Herod-
otus, 52 sqq. ; treatment by
Thucydides, 103 sq.

Troy, building of walls, according
to Herodorus, 20

Turgot, A. R. J., 256

Tyche, in Thucydides, 125 ; in
Polybius, 200 sqq.

Tyrrell, R. Y., 160 note

Valerius Antias, 225, 227

Varro, 234

Velleius Paterculus, 231

Virgil, 205

Virtii, 146

Wachsmuth, C, 37, 166, 226, and
Bibliography

Walker, E. M., 157

Wiedemann, A., 70, and Biblio-
graphy

Wilamowitz-MoUendoriF, U. von,
on Pherecydes, 19 ; on

Melesagoras, 26 ; on Thucy-
dides, 85, 86, 88, 91, 114,
150 ; on Theopompus, 156 ;
on political literature, 180 ;
on Atthidographers, 183, and
Bibliography

Wilcken, U., 25

Wolfflin, J., 103, and Bibliography

Woodhouse, J., 70

Wunderer, C, 214, and Biblio-
graphy

Xanthus, historian, 26
Xenomedes, historian, 26
Xenophaues, his rationalism, 10;

epic poems, 11, 17
Xenophon, 151 sqq. ; Anabasis,

152, 176 ; Hellenica, ih. ;

Agesilaus, 153 ; Memorahilia,

154 ; as a biographer, 163 sq. ;

213 ; 230

Zalmoxis, 61

Zeno of Rhodes, 198, 216

Zoilus, 162

THE END

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